


scream in there

by thepredatorywasp



Series: scream in there [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Disabled Character, Heavy Angst, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Literary References & Allusions, Love Letters, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Possessive Behavior, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Self-Hatred, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-10 19:40:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 46,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20140915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepredatorywasp/pseuds/thepredatorywasp
Summary: Over the course of Max’s half-year sleep, Alex seeks to earn his keep, Michael drinks and stumbles into talk therapy, Isobel rises as a combination Instagram influencer and supervillain, and Kyle just wants one quiet day.Or, Michael and Kyle have a long talk about what their begrudgingly shared family needs, make some decisions, and still hate each other (mostly).





	1. give up trying to be someone

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Please read the tags. I tried my best to catch everything. If you think something needs to be tagged and isn't, or should be tagged in additional way, please do not hesitate to let me know either here or on [tumblr](https://usbournejez.tumblr.com/).  
2\. I did my best with the damn timeline, but the passing of time on this television program is so murky that in some instances I just had to make a call. (It’s almost like the show is badly written or something!). Thus, I tagged it canon divergence, just to be safe.  
3\. Candy was my OTP for the original. They invented teen romance. Romeo, who??? But Stargazer was a close second. Alex and Isobel clearly are destined to be platonic life mates in this timeline. I am willing it into existence.  
4\. Also, I inadvertently ended up making a [90+ song playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Pz7QySVBOhjsl31RLIkfK?si=sqmRtw7fROCABGDDlGeGqw) for this damn thing. I think I will be adding to it ad nauseam. Maybe we have the same taste in music!  


Alex’s breath caught in his throat the first time he saw the pods. The colors transfixed him beyond measure. They caused an itching deep in his dermis. He thought the piece of the console was gorgeous, too. But the pods surpassed reason. Unearthly, by its very definition. Max seemed to be a peace inside now, encased without worry. Alex is envious. How blissful it must be to be suspended, without responsibility, without pain. 

Oddly, Alex has been dreaming in yellows and reds since his father died. No pinks or blues or violets or greens. Over four months with the monster under the bed dead and gone. Yet, he still dreams of dry canary deserts mixing with cherry hemoglobin; maudlin maroon clouds and striking goldenrod moons, who croon, “I love you, but I don’t like what I see when I look at you. Have you tried the artichoke? Have you tried the Rita rita? They were a mistake by God, like you. By hook or by crook, you’ll never get back what the nightjar took. To our youngest son, Alexander Waya Manes, we bequeath nothing. We bequeath nothing. We nothing.” 

Alex is twenty-nine and feels as though he is slowly growing deranged. Surely growing and harvesting madness because the presence in the body—this body—is an unwanted consciousness. The body is a yearned for memory. His body, his brothers’ bodies, his mother’s body, his lover’s body, his lover’s mother’s body are all evocation.

He senses someone coming before his Beagle Pit mix, Fiona, yips towards the cave’s opening. She raises her head from its resting place, warning him a few seconds before the makeshift alarm panel pings. He pats her head in thanks and continues on strumming his guitar. She is an affectionate, good pup. A fact that is demonstrated by the dog hair that seems to permanently decorate his trousers and tops of late. Tonight is no exception. He dons an old shirt littered with patches of brown and white fur, with four black bars on white that encourage him to R-R-Rise above. She is curled up with his hoodie on the cave floor. The warmth from the pods causing Alex to shred it off his skin and push up his sleeves a few hours ago. 

He finishes playing out the final chords of the song he’d been practicing. He sings the last rendition of the chorus about coming back down and telling no one your name. He grimaces at his sloppy mistakes and its soppy content. It has been nearly a decade since he has sung and played with any regularity. He’s been learning Rosa’s roster for years. They started this game sometime in 2005. After a rumor spread about people seeing Rosa at Planned Parenthood in Albuquerque over the summer. She hadn’t been at school in a few days. When he asked after her, Liz refused to meet his eyes. That same night, he crawled through Rosa’ bedroom window, 1980’s boyfriend style, because he knew it would give her a thrill. He said nothing. He believed there was truly nothing he could say that would help. So he played her a Pearl Jam song, kissed her on the forehead, and climbed back down. 

When he came into the Crashdown to pick up Liz a week later, Arturo held Alex’s face in his hands. It took everything in Alex to not flinch from the man who held him so firmly and looked at him so intently. Arturo held his gaze as if he wanted to memorize Alex’s kohl-lined eyes. All the while he murmured, “Eres gentil y fuerte, hijo. You are a wonder. Eres, eres.” 

Alex has always been adept at fooling people. But, not the moon. Never the moon. 

Shaking himself from the memory, he plants a disarming grin on his face. He is expecting a vital and snarky Rosa, brimming with teenage youth and beauty. A head of curls and a smirk greet him, instead. Michael is carrying a huge thermos and with his bag and guitar strapped to his back. Fiona, the traitor, takes off bounding toward Michael, who has already thrown his bags to ground and is crouching down to greet her. The sound of her jangling collar, her panting breath, and his man’s soft laughter soothes him. Though, Alex fears that he smells unpleasant. Of only sand, sweat, and heat. This anxiety causes him to lose his proverbial footing. He states dumbly that Michael is not Rosa. That he had been expecting Rosa. 

That’s a common feeling for him of late. Bemis sang about that. Young, dumb, stung. The young part slips further away every day. Alex reckons he was never really young in mind, in soul. Rosa is still young in nearly every way. It’s why he adores her, adores watching her preserved all apple cheeked. Having her back is such a blessing. What unexpected happiness that Max doled out in his foolish, selfish largess. She spent her first month back hiding out in his cabin. It was a brief, but magical time in his life. He felt so useful. Michael came around a lot during that time and she said never a word. Rosa has never judged him, not once. He felt close to her and like he was doing good. She sleeps in Kyle’s spare bedroom now and Alex thinks that is even better. He hates himself for feeling a speck of joy when Michael and the others are suffering so much in Max’s absence. A guilt he and the rest of his human brethren secretly share. The thrill of it, the smiles when they believe no one is looking. 

They were worried about hiding Rosa. It took Alex nearly a month to convince them all that she could blend very easily. Liz looked so hurt when he intimated that while they remembered Rosa, the town really did not. He repeated constantly that he couldn’t name any more than ten people in the Pony at any given time. Maria lamented small town minds. Alex asserted none too kindly that Roswell is the fifth largest population center in the state. Alex has been to a lot of places. He has nearly thirty years of anecdotal evidence that people are ignorant everywhere. With a population of nearly fifty thousand, it is easy for Rosa to hide in the crowd. In a town where everyone claims to know everyone, nobody knows anybody. She is too young to be the Rosa of town controversy. Chop her hair, Alex had urged. Rosa wanted to just shave her whole head, but they all agreed that would attract attention, rather than repel it. He compromised and as he shaved her sides, he lobbied for her to either thin out even more, or plump up. Rosa opted for the latter. He bought her ice cream whenever she wanted. Maria taught her how to do her make-up differently, something about contouring her nose and thickening her brows. Alex rustled up a social security card and an Iowa license within days. She wore hats a lot now. She rarely went into town. An older woman at the road stop diner off 285 South said that she looked like an Ortecho. Rosa didn’t even bat even bat an eye, seamlessly forced her voice into a higher register and replied, “Oh, yeah, Lizzie’s my cousin.”

They are still hiding her from Arturo and the guilt rots in all their guts. 

Michael takes off his jacket, dropping it unceremoniously on the cot Kyle bought. The blue plaid shirt Michael is wearing is only half buttoned. A lump forms in Alex’s throat at the sight. Michael places his coffee down on the ground and resumes scratching behind Fiona’s ears. His slight smile at the dog’s happiness makes Alex feel warm despite himself. Michael is talking in his dog voice when he says, “Arturo had an issue at the Crash—”

Alex startles. He stands too quickly and without enough compensation for his leg. He lets out a strained exhale. “Is Liz okay? Is _ he _okay? I knew I should have set up surveillance there. I knew it. Spread too fuckin’ thin. But, I can’t fuckin’ think. I can’t sle—”

“Hey, hey now. Everything is okay, darl—it’s okay. They’re fine. We’re all fine. Just had all three servers call out,” Michael placates. He is watching him closely, eyeing Alex’s hip in particular. The soft look in his eyes and the aborted endearment make Alex’s lips curl back into a snarl. He steels himself. He needs to make it through the next five minutes without making a scene. He lets out a deep exhale and then another and then another until his heart rate drops. He is in love with Michael. He is so in love with him that no matter how difficult things are between them at times, his chest still tightens in the most heady way whenever Michael sets his eyes on him. He such close quarters, Alex can breathe him in. Michael always smelled so good. 

Still, Alex would have preferred such a surprise from Isobel. He never felt apprehensive about his cleanliness, or lack thereof, around her. Isobel had become the most wonderful, surprising source of solace in his life these past few months. In all his preparedness, Alex never saw her coming. Four months ago, Alex gave the rest of them two full days to collect themselves after placing Max in the pod to recover. In those two days, he and Kyle transformed the hatch in the cabin to a working site. Alex developed a schedule for observation and security for Max. He then presented the plan to all of them methodically. He stressed that everyone had an important role and the end result of this was going to be everyone’s safety and bringing Max back. They just have to maintain a bunker-like mentality. When he thinks back on that day, what he remembers the most is Isobel’s eyes. Her darkened and powerful eyes almost boring through him as he spoke. Solely focused on him, her slightly tilted head, considering. She dug in the grey matter, metaphorical hands soiled. She weighed him, measured him, and he was not found wanting. It was and remained an odd, unfamiliar feeling. She asked Alex to please drive her home after the meeting. Her voice sure and clear, as if she had already made the choice for the both of them. It was a foregone conclusion. They drove home in silence, save for Isobel’s pop music piping through his car’s speakers and the uncharacteristic smack of her lips on his temple before she stepped out and slammed the passenger side door. They had been stealing horses together ever since. 

“Great minds,” Michael says, in a clear attempt to break the tension. He is holding up his own guitar, taken from the Pony months ago. Michael is smiling at him in an easy way, so prepossessing. _ Behold _ , Alex recites in his mind, _ how beautiful you are, my darling, how very beautiful; your eyes are doves. _ Alex feels obligated to his mirror Michael’s mirth, though it presents more like a cringe. 

“Yeah, well, you just missed the Rickie Lee Jones/James Taylor three hour spectacular.”

“They’re Max’s favorites.” 

Michael continues stepping closer, so Alex turns from him. He grabs his book and guitar. “I know. Isobel told me.” 

Michael points to the book in Alex’s hand. “You must go on.”

Alex musters a phantom of grin. “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” 

He was fourteen when a chubby and kind librarian at the public library handed the crisp hardback to him when his father wasn’t looking. He thought he was completely alone in the world until he read it. Michael and Alex had always been voracious readers. This was a facet of themselves that was lost in the shuffle of the Grand Tale of Max and Liz and their need to be the best. Their frail egos were inexplicably in the balance and it was never worth the whining. Let them ‘win.’ It hardly mattered. He used to watch the curly-haired boy in between the stacks until the closing announcement came over the loudspeakers. Fascinated by how Michael’s brow furrowed in concentration, how he unconsciously tapped his foot, how he helped the old ladies on the computer next to him with typing when the librarians were busy. On more than one occasion, he caught Michael looking back at him. Michael would bite at his lower lip as Alex hid behind whatever comic he had been reading. The library was always a safe place. Temperature controlled, too. 

Weeks after Jesse destroyed the haven they built in the shed, Alex went to Michael, as he always did. Crawled into the truck bed, cradled the boy’s still mangled hand with feather-light touch. That night listed every story they had consumed. For each title they had both read, Alex would press a kiss to Michael’s skin. Michael listed every installment of _ A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Chronicle of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Redwall, Harry Potter, Discworld _ , and _ His Dark Materials _ in between the slip of his tongue into Alex’s mouth. The memory is a painful, but loving one. Just plain painful for Michael, he imagines. Alex can accept that. He won’t mention it, though the memory gnaws at him. Do you remember when I was whole? Or, at least, do you remember when I pretended to be? He wants to ask. He wants to hear Michael say he doesn’t remember.

He returns back to his mess, steadily cleaning up after himself. He reaches into the sack, removing the thick packet encased in a binder. He tries to force himself to look at Michael, but he can’t. He is a coward and says to the cave wall, “I have something for you. I was going to give it to Isobel later.” Michael cuts him off, saying that he has something for him, too. Alex sighs deeply and faces Michael. He closes his eyes and reprimands, “Guerin, if you say something like ‘and you are going to have to unzip my pants to find it,’ I swear to God.”

He swallows nervously, as Michael chuckles and steps ever closer. The man’s eyes are clear as he licks at his lower lip. Like a video of his former baby-faced self. Alex loves him. He wants him. He loathes his fervent want. He should be able to quell it. But, he ain’t shit and it thrums, boiling his blood and heightening his senses. He can feel every twitch of Michael’s hand and smell the clean sweat and spice of his skin. Michael’s voice is gentle when he asks, “I’ll go first ‘kay? Do you still play the piano?” Michael raises his eyebrows as Alex flounders. “Piano, the big thing with the black and white keys and the pedals.”

He is struck dumb yet again. A skill unique to Michael. He recovers quicker this time. “No, I haven’t played in years. Not since high school. Why?”

“Figured as much, I thought this,” Michael removes an LP from his beaten up messenger bag with flourish, “could serve as inspiration. I saw it in a bin at the Goodwill. Some dumb fucker must’ve not known what it was worth.”

He once told Michael, to negate his endless, kindhearted teasing about Alex’s propensity for Sunny Day Real Estate and Hole that it was Nina Simone who really sang his heart’s songs. He recognizes the album by its blue shade and the piercing eyes that adorn the cover. It isn’t worth shit. It’s a new pressing. Probably bought for thirty bucks by a hipster in a Barnes and Noble. It is mass produced. The record feels odd in his hands. It is heavier than he remembers. Alex sold off his meager collection when he enlisted. It weighed him down. Sentiment weighed him down. He doesn’t even have a proper record player anymore. Michael doesn’t need to know that. He doesn’t need to know any of it. He looks so pleased with himself. He finds Michael’s eyes with his own, hampers down the instinct to brush an ever errant curl off the man’s forehead, and quietly thanks him. 

Michael seems to be anxious for him to leave. He is bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Why did you stop playing? You’re way better at the piano bench than the guitar. You have such a nice voice that people miss that you are always a little sloppy joe on the fret.”

Alex laughs, the feeling so foreign in his throat. He croaks out, “Fuck you, too.”

“Call ‘em like I hear ‘em,” Michael needles, plopping himself in one of the lawn chairs. Fiona follows him, like he is a second master. They both look at him, beckoning him to join them with their beautiful eyes. Alex feels them falling into old patterns before he has the presence of mind to stop himself he settles down into the lawn chair next to him.

“I couldn’t very well transport a whole-ass piano to hell and gone with me,” he says. Guitars were easy to transport, easy to leave behind, and easy to buy again, no matter where he was. Music, the universal language, all that shit. He could still grip a guitar, at least. The years he spent at the piano, in front of a Nintendo, and creating and breaking code make his nearly thirty year-old wrists ache in the mornings. He can’t run the way he used to, he can’t skate, he can’t fly. On top of that, how dare he talk to Michael, of all people, about losing functionality in his hands? He’d rather talk about his missing leg than the fuckin’ carpel tunnel. He reminds Michael that he was never all that good. 

Michael bumps their shoulders in an obvious attempt to get Alex to look at him. “Come off it. You were spectacular.”

He smiles tightly, avoiding Michael’s gaze by focusing on Fiona. “I wasn’t. You're--you don't remember.”

“No. You don't remember. You were amazing,” Michael implores, any trace of bitterness had been replaced with disbelief. 

“That’s nice, but I wasn’t. I know enough to know. I just didn’t have it. I didn’t have it. I don’t have it,” he says forcefully. Michael says his name softly, like when someone is approaching a disturbed animal. Alex straightens his posture and carefully stands, “What you think was or was not true is—it is sweet, but it doesn’t matter. Because you don’t become a jazz pianist at thirty, Guerin. Not in this day and age. You just don’t.” When he reaches his book bag, Alex hears Michael shifting to stand himself. “Just—just leave it alone, alright?” 

“Fine, whatever. Jesus, Alex,” Michael growls, settling back down into his seat. “But, even you can’t downplay your vocal ability.”

Alex nods, and in an attempt to avoid further argument, agrees, “I can hold a note.”

Michael snorts and Alex shakes his head. 

Michael declares proudly to Fiona, “Spinto tenor with heldentenor capabilities. Two octave range, three if he really pushes himself. Yeah, I guess he can hold a note or two.” Alex turns to him with his hands on his hips. He finds Michael smirking in that frustratingly provocative and concupiscent way of his. “You can hit a full G4. You think just anybody off the street can do that?”

Alex tilts his head and sucks his teeth in response. He wants to scream at him. He wants to crawl on his belly towards Michael and beg him to settle in between his thighs. Alex spins back on his heel as best he can. He removes the binder from his backpack and holds it out to Michael. “You showed me yours.” 

He opens it to the front page for him and Michael appears visibly relieved. The last time Alex had a surprise for him it was a large piece of the console Michael is working on. That gift giving ended in a fight full of accusations. Now, Michael rubs his hand down his face, skimming over the information. He thanks Alex and then begins reading it aloud. 

Alex had done a cross examination of the big fifteen: Georgia, Virginia Tech, Boulder, WPI, MIT, Missouri, Penn State, RPI, UNM, UCLA, Texas A&M, University of Florida, USC, Clarkson, and University of Maryland. He then divided each category out with care and precision: Geographic Location, Average Travel time to/from Roswell via Plane, Average Travel Time to/from Roswell via Car, Total Cost (Tuition, Room and Board, Supplies, etc.), Cost (minus Room and Board), Average Merit Award for Freshman with Financial Need, Average Undergraduate Need-Based Award, Combined BS/MS program. 

Michael stops reading and squints. “ADP?” 

“Adult Degree Program.” 

Michael raises an eyebrow and continues in mock reverence, “Political Affiliations of Area, General Wow Factor.” He is actively teasing him at this point and Alex is burning with embarrassment. “What’s the verdict, counselor?”

“It’s just a list, Guerin.”

“Yeah, and you have an opinion on anything and everything.”

Alex once fought with Maria for two hours in earnest about what the best Christmas song was. To this day, he knows he is right. It’s Fairytale in New York.

“Michigan or MIT.”

“I’d rather die in Roswell than be alive in Michigan.” Michael’s ever-present smirk turns melancholy. “Me at MIT is laughable. A little silly.”

This is precisely why Alex put the information together. Michael has never believed in himself. Alex told him so and to check the score requirements. “Page eight. You might actually be better served going to some place like Northeastern for the bachelor’s in Mechanical and then doing the AeroAstro PhD at MIT. Use that time in undergrad to get some internships. You might even be able to get a job in their ARCLab and that would give you a big in. And, you know, it’s fuckin’ Boston. The best city in the whole world.” 

Michael puts the binder in his bag and removes his PTSD Workbook. Alex can see that the spine is broken in. Alex is overflowing with affection now, his next statement is impulsive, “I’ve been meaning to tell you that I think that’s great. That she’d be proud of you.”

Michael stops short. When he looks at Alex, his mouth is a tense line. “She’s dead.” Alex opens his mouth, but Michael grips his book and says with a tight voice, “She is dead. Period.”

Alex nods, begins to rock where he stands. “She still knows. Somewhere in the multiverse. In the molecules or energy, or whatever.”

“You don’t believe that in all that bullshit, Captain,” Michael’s voice is dripping with cruelty. It’s not the first time Alex has received his malice and he is sure it won’t be the last. 

He tells Michael, with a shaky voice and sparse unbidden tears falling due to his mistake that she is proud, that they all are.

“You can’t just say shit like that because you think it will sound nice.”

“I thought… I believe it. I do. I felt voicing it was honoring her. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“You can’t say shit like that, either.”

He nods, “Okay. I’m very sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just—I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

He watches Michael slouch back into the chair closest to Max and as he runs his palms from under Fiona’s jaw to her belly. Alex listens to the pair of hitching whimpers that fall from the man’s throat for a few moments before returning back to his work. Alex packs up his things in less organized fashion than he typically would due to his haste to get out of shared space with Michael as quickly as possible. He grabs his packed bag and Fiona’s leash off the communal lap desk they keep here. He doesn’t want or need Alex for comfort, he tells himself. He is a thoughtless fool. 

He feels Michael’s heat at his back before he actually feels the touch on him, his hot palms grasping each of Alex’s hip bones, whining into his neck. Alex shushes him, throwing a hand back, groping at the base of Michael’s skull. As soon as Alex’s fingers begin to stroke his hair, Michael is dragging Alex forcefully to the bed, with nary a thought for his leg. Alex allows himself to be heaved and situated into Michael’s lap, ignoring the belt buckle digging into his thighs. He sits sideways, his legs dangling over Michael’s onto the flat mattress. Michael leans his head back against the cave wall. Alex watches his Adam’s apple bob, as he out little groan-like cries. When he moves to adjust, Michael pulls him back down and whispers, his breath on Alex’s ear, “Just like this, please.” 

Alex's first real memory is from a Tuesday afternoon in 1993. He looked up at his mother reading the paper from under the large oak table that his father found on the side of the road. One man's trash and all that. His mother wore a checkered shirt and had a red cup. The grey room smelled of rust and disinfectant and over-ripe fruit. He tugged, tugged at her, insistent, with chubby arms and a dry throat. She lifted him from the floor, careful of his bare torso and the rough edged table top. "How did my baby get under there?" she asked him, rocking him in her lap. Her tan skin sweat-slick, her hands calloused from work. "Oh, how. Oh, how did my little baby get under there?" 

Alex hums in compliance now. He guides Michael’s head to his chest and rocks them slowly, side-to-side. Michael begins panting out how he can’t shake it. He just can’t. Alex says words like ‘atrocity’ and ‘time table’ and how Michael is ‘doing his best, doing so good now.’ How he is always so good. Soon Michael is ranting that he killed her, he killed his own mother. Alex lets him talk, get a release. When he feels Michael running out of steam, he hushes him. “She felt no pain. No pain at all. You gave her mercy. She was suffering. She got to see her baby boy one last time. You gave her such a gift.” Alex whispers how his mother loves him, loved him so much. How Isobel loves him. How he would tell Michael he loved him a thousand times a day if he thought it would make a difference. 

After a spell, Michael calms. He looks exhausted when he says, “And I just _ miss _Max.”

Alex makes a sympathetic, knowing noise. He is cleaning Michael’s nose with his own sleeve, when Michael whispers, “And I see her when I look at you sometimes.” That he didn’t know. “A lot of the time. It hurts. It sucks. But, it’s also really good? Right here." He pokes at Alex’s glabella, causing him to go to cross-eyed looking at his finger. “All right here, baby. It’s all right there.” 

Fiona pushes her snout between them and howls. Alex smiles reassuringly and firmly rubs his palms up and down Michael’s forearms. A mocking of the same soothing gesture he had for himself as a child. Michael has Fiona get down and begins pushing Alex’s shirt collar to the side to nip at his collarbones. He passes a hand over Alex’s thighs and hips. Michael’s large, heavenly hands on him feel so wonderful and true that he lets out a weak groan. He twists to place his lips gently on Michael’s forehead. “No. No, we’re not doing that.”

Michael whines and asks why. Alex points to Max. Michael huffs and pulls Alex closer to his chest. He can understand why for Michael was always a pleasant weight on him, as well. 

Michael asks if they can stay like this for a little while longer. Alex just cradles his head, kisses each eyelid, and dries Michael’s newly wet cheeks with his thumbs. 

“I can’t stop thinking about what they did to her.”

“I can’t either. I think about it all the time.”

Michael roughly wipes his raw red nose with his hand a few times. He looks about the cave, as if seeing it for the first time tonight. “You don’t sleep when you’re here, do you?” 

_ The soft grass is our bed. As majestic as the stars in procession _, Alex recalls from times in a pew with his auntie and brothers when he adorned Flint's good shoes. They were two sizes too big. The constant standing and sitting caused the his thin socks to rub against his heel. His sweaty feet slide and tore. It gave him blisters that hurt somethin' fierce. The skin ached and burned so bad that he limped to school the next day. It was good preparation for breaking in military-grade combat boots.

“You’re also not eating when you’re here, are you? Fuckin’ hell, Alex. I thought you stop all this martyring horseshit.” 

He crows, squirming in Michael’s iron hold. “I ate last night. When I am in the middle of a project, I only eat once a day. It’s efficient.” When it becomes clear from Michael’s eyebrows migrating to his hairline that that answer is not enough to fend off another round of questioning, he sighs. “I have been successfully feeding myself since I was six years old” 

“It’s been almost eighteen hours, darlin’. You don’t have to treat everything like a fucking a mission. Please, don’t. Let me go and get—”

“Please don’t call me that.” Michael looks wounded by his tone, his face contorting in pain and confusion as Alex untangles himself from the man’s lap. Alex apologizes gently, “Just not now. Please. Not when I feel so terrible about what I said.” 

He clicks his tongue to make Fiona return to his side. Michael clumsily unscrews the cap from his thermos and takes a few swigs of coffee. Watching Alex clip the leash on, Michael says, “This last time. That’s on me."

Without looking up from adjusting Fiona’s collar, Alex whispers, as if to hide the truth from their encased, unconscious company, “You keep breaking your rule.” The rule that they can’t talk about the past, only what is happening now. When he finally looked up at Michael, intending to give him a tight smile and a friendly goodbye, he is met with Michael’s conflicted face. Alex’s knees audibly creak as he stands. “Well, Maxwell, I’ll see you Thursday night. Expect a full _ Survivor _report. Are you going to be okay?”

“Always am.”

“Liar,” Alex says softly and with wrought iron affection.

Michael looks at him so openly. He puts his coffee down, stands up again with his fists clenched at his sides. “Look, I didn’t mean what I said.”

Alex tilts his head. 

“To Isobel, at the fuckin’ Noodle Palace or whatever.”

“Pho King Noodles?” 

“Yes, that shit hole.” 

“Not a shit hole. That was in December. We already talked about that. It’s fine.”

“It is anything but fine.”

“You were drunk and angry and grieving,” Alex reasons. It is also hardly the worst thing Michael has ever said or done to him.

“That’s not an excuse. You and Isobel have to stop making excuses for me,” Michael half-shouts, entreating and firm. “I need you to tell me that you know that I have never been ashamed of what happens between us. Not once, not ever. That it makes me feel…” Michael closes his eyes and lets out a frustrated noise. “That it makes me feel right. The way we fit together. It isn’t a joke to me. I need you to tell me you know that.”

Words have always come easier to Michael. They clog in Alex’s throat, he has to push them out. Every vocalization is like a wet, dirty birth. Michael once told him that he was all pain and misery. That they both were. That’s when Alex knew for certain that something was fundamentally wrong. To Alex, his time with Michael had not been all pain and misery. Quite the opposite. And how good of monster one must be to not even realize you are one? Michael’s tone now mirrors the voice he has when they are under the covers and it makes Alex ache all over. He wants Michael all the time. He is a writhing demon. He vibrates with it. Alex wishes he could say that if he could go back, he would have never let Michael inside of him. It made him vulnerable. It made him weak. Made him sound and look pathetic. Always throwing himself on the couch or truck bed or whatever they ended up face first. Or on his back with his legs already spread, grabbing at Michael’s good hand and guiding it behind his balls, to where he wants him. But he wouldn’t take it back. He wouldn't take it back because it is always so good. He craves it, still; a ravenous, greedy animal. 

The first time he had enough leave and money to make it home, he ran to Michael and found him working on a ranch. Found him with skin golden from the sun and freshly burly. He was like a god, a pugilist, a gladiator all in one and so big. An embodiment of every wet dream Alex had ever or will ever have come to life. His face like a sculpture. His hairy, strong body adorned with a magnificent cock that would grow so hard and angry that the head would be a slight, pretty purple; a vexatious thing that curves just perfectly to the left so that he can reach wondrous places. Places that would make Alex convulse and chant words he never used aside from in this trance with Michael. _In me, in me. Honey, please, honey, honey. Please._ Only ever with Michael, only ever for Michael. He mewled this truth into Michael’s ear that night on the ranch, in the truck, the cold night their only witness. Michael twisted his hips and teased him, “So big, and I think you like it, Private.” 

He tried to squirm away from him then, he felt so ashamed. But lovely Michael held him firm. He whispered adoring things as he cupped his jaw with such affection, moved his thumbs in simple, gentle patterns along his cheek bones, pressed their foreheads together. “Hey, Private, hey. Please look at me. We got nothin’ to be ashamed of. Nothin’ at all.” 

He’d asked if Michael liked it too. If he liked what they did in hiding, if he wished Alex were different. If he wished Alex liked different things, wished that Alex were exciting. In answer, Michael reverently squeezed the stubborn, slight baby fat that still clung to Alex’s stomach and sides. Michael pushed in until their hips were flush, ran the pad of his thumb along Alex’s dick and then down to where they were connected. Alex shivered as his man murmured about how his favorite job was making Alex warm like July. 

Michael would sometimes call him Eurydice. Other times, feverish in his desire haze, Michael pressed his teeth to Alex’s neck and murmured, “Thelxiepeia.” He dropped his mouth much lower and mewled against the sweaty vertebrae found there. “Leucosia, Molpe. My half-bird, sing for me, tell of your mantic dream. Tell me, half-bird, tell me.”

He and Michael had a lot of problems, but they always looked each other in the eye. Whatever that is worth today, Alex isn’t sure. All he knows is Michael is looking at him with the same eyes now and he has to look back. Michael’s voice is raspy, his intent is urgent, “I have a list of things. My shrink told me to make a list, so I did. It’s in my truck. I—I have it memorized, though. I was unfair to you. I mean, the thing with the blonde chick? Throwing her in your face because I was angry. I wanted to hurt you then and as soon as I did, I hated myself. I hated myself. You know, I didn’t listen to you, for so long. Not really. I—Don’t cry. Please.”

Alex touches his own cheek. He looks at his wet fingertips, momentarily confused. He takes another few deep breaths. “I can’t—Can we do this another time?”

Michael shrugs and approaches him slowly, asks if he can return the favor. As Michael gently dries his cheeks with his sleeves, Alex thinks of all the varied mistakes he has made in the course of his life. The things he has let go unsaid because of his fear of misspeaking. Alex reckons the wound is already open and he believes Michael needs to hear this, as well. Proud mother, imperfect brother.

He nods to himself, growing the nerve and blurting out, “ I always kind of hated Max.” He can feel Michael’s chest expand to touch his own as he takes a deep breath and then hums in interest. Michael runs his hands through Alex’s hair, commenting how he likes it like this, a little longer. This only serves to spurs Alex further. “He was always so pretentious and that whole ‘nice guy’ thing he has going. He was fixated on Liz in high school and he barely knew her. It was creepy.” He remembers his teenage self laying awake at night thinking that if that is what love was, he never wanted it. And then Michael came along, scooped his palpitating heart out with his nimble hands and ate it whole, “He’s controlling. He presents himself differently to different people. I despise that. You’ve never done that, never ever. You are innately honest with the world.”

“I lied to you for a decade about what I am,” Michael pronounces, giving Alex a small tap on the cheek, as he moves away from him to pick his thermos off of the ground. “I lie to everyone about what I am.”

“Fuck that, I’m talking about who are you,” Alex seethes, practically hissing. He forces out the aberration. “I hated him for the way he spoke to you, about you. He would hit you. He shoved you. If I had been there when he shot—he _shot_ _at you_, Michael. He made you feel less than. Max Evans, what a ‘nice guy.’” 

He hates that some part of him never wants Max to come back. He never wants him to come back because when he does—and he will if Alex has to drag him back to the world of the living with his bare hands—Isobel will go away. When Max was alive, she barely had enough time for Michael. 

He, for a second, in this very moment, inexplicably and pitifully, remembers playing alone in the park as a child. He remembers Maria finding him and placing a flower crown on his head. 

“I don’t think you’ll like him any more once we get him outta here. Max is still Max. His way or the highway." He raises his healed hand, wiggling the still atrophied fingers. 

Alex flinches. He barely registers the flash of Michael’s hand before his fingers are around his wrist. God, his reflexes are getting slower by the day. He slouches now over the keyboard. He needs to call his physical therapist. Michael clears his throat, tugging on Alex’s wrist again, forcing him to look. “I know I fucked up, okay? I know it. Do you need help getting to your car?”

This could be another proposition, if he wanted it to be. But, he couldn’t go there with Michael again. It is a punishment Alex earned well. 

“I got it.” Alex tries his hardest to not glare as he expertly peels away Michael’s grip. He looks at the face of the man he loves. “I’m trying to be good for you. I am trying my best to leave you be, like everyone said I should. You didn’t fuck up. You didn’t. But, sometimes you come around and you say these things—I just get confused.”

Michael nods to his bag. “That’s leavin’ me be?”

Perhaps the blush has become a permanent feature. 

“I was going to tell Isobel to say it was from her.”

Michael laughs, always a welcome sound. “Isobel is family. I love her. ‘Thoughtful’ is not a word that many would use to describe her. Also, this has Manes efficiency written all over it.” He levels Alex with annoyingly concerned gaze, “Are you sure you don’t help getting to your car?” Alex nods tightly. Michael returns the gesture and begins walking back to the pods, he calls over his shoulder, “See you later, Fiona. Be a good girl.”

Good girl. Be a good girl. 

Alex clears his throat and tightens his hold on Fiona’s leash. “Isobel has manifested pyrotechnic energy. She can make it come out from her fingers. It knocks out her out after a few minutes, but she is getting stronger every day. Has she shown you that yet?”

Michael is shaking his head and smiling when he turns back around, muttering something about the pair of them being the gift that keeps on giving. 

“Well, has she?”

“Nope,” Michael replies, popping the p. “She cooked a burger for me the other day. With the palm of her hand. She make you a meal?”

Alex shakes his head, biting down hard on his tongue to suppress a sob that is wrought from grief and frustration and fatigue. She is trying to split them. She knows she is getting more powerful and she is hiding things from them now. 

“She’s a clever girl. But, she doesn’t know that we sometimes talk after we fuck still.”

Alex cowers. Michael apologizes. He waves him off. “That—do you think you could work with her. Use your abilities to route the electricity as a power boost, maybe?”

Michael has been practicing healing on his own. He hasn’t told the others yet, but he showed Alex a few times. He’s closed a paper-cut and lessened a bruise. Alex thinks that maybe Isobel could charge Michael, like the most beautiful battery Alex had ever seen. Michael raises his head at that and shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, swaying in place. “Listen, baby, Liz’s genotype theory? It’s—It ain’t gonna work.”

Alex swallows. “I know. I’ve been working my way through the Caulfield backlog and the new files from the camp in Syracuse and I don’t there is anything there for her. The deeper I get the more I think it is a pipe dream.”

Michael squints at him a considering way. The crinkling skin around his eyes makes Alex’s stomach flip. “And just how long have you been working out how to make Iz and I a walkin’, talkin’ two alien defib? When did you find time? I thought you were looking into the bomb. I thought you were working. Liz said something about a new job?”

There is a job, it is just this and not some boring IT gig. Alex can lie with the best of them, but deceiving Michael has always made him feel base and wrong. “I can get some mice for you. To practice healing. In the interim. Good night.”

Michael calls his name again, but Alex just waves and begins making his way towards the car. 

* * *

To hear that he was a trigger for Michael had been the worst kind of pain. He would’ve preferred a slap or a slice of a knife. He understands Michael’s need for someone else. Someone easier. Not that part of Maria’s beauty wasn’t her immense complexity. But, because the two of them come with a lot of baggage separately, let alone together. Alex can’t take it from behind standing without panicking. Michael cannot handle any pressure on his throat, or feeling as though he is being held down. It has never particularly been Alex’s preference to be the dominant one during sex. But he definitely feels inadequate and uncomfortable doing so now, since the amputation. The pair of them have terrible nightmares. For Michael, since Caulfield. For himself, since forever. A handful of times over the years, when Alex was panting and sweating, careening towards the edge, with his legs wrapped around Michael’s waist in pure want, the man had punched an involuntary ‘daddy’ out of him. Alex’s face still burns in shame with the memory. They both have to be given fair warning when being approached from behind in the dark. Alex had seen the varied consequences of Michael’s rage. Michael had witnessed Alex when his threat switch gets flipped countless times. Alex sometimes cries after Michael comes. Michael talks too much. Alex doesn't talk enough. 

Alex is anything but easy and fun. He is irony compounded. He doesn’t like men, but he is a man. He doesn’t like men, but he wants to have sex with men. One man, really. 

Loving him is a terrible punishment for Michael’s already difficult life. He hopes, in the part of his weak heart that loves so much it could burst, that Michael’s affection and lust for him will soon fade for good. Please let him save himself from me, he pleads into the sky most nights.

He pauses on his trek and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. He used to have a grip on this. When he came back to Roswell, he felt strong. He doesn’t know when he lost it. He was strong. That was not a facade, he tells himself. 

Kyle and Isobel both said he is the easiest person to be friends with. He doesn’t deserve them. 

A few weeks ago, Alex finally worked up the courage to ask Maria what she would have done if it had been Max. Would she have still given it a shot, made the same choice? Maria had balked, but said nothing. They both knew the answer. As a teen, he thought that he was on the outskirts of their group because he had been a boy. That’s why Liz dated Kyle even though he tortured him. Because he was a boy and he could hold his own. As an adult, he knows better now. Fighting for a friendship that time long ago let go of. It’s pathetic. Isobel told him so. He’s saccharine-sweet, clinging to them. He knows it. It’s the behavior of a weak man, but that is what he is. What he always has been. Liz said to be supportive and he couldn’t manage it, because he is selfish. Mere days after telling Michael that she wasn’t his mommy and leaving him drunk outside of his Airstream, Maria came to Alex. She said that she wanted them to work at being friends again. In an attempt to be strong, and if he was frank, deter her from coming into the cabin where Michael was sleeping, he told Maria that they weren’t really friends anymore. That they hadn’t been for awhile. At least, that was his understanding. 

He gestured to himself and told her that there was nothing for her there anymore. If he had wanted to spiteful, he could have been. He nearly was. He nearly told her of how ten days or so into her and Michael trying, Michael followed him into the shower and Alex just couldn’t deny him. Nearly told her of the countless times Michael came to him, sometimes sober, but mostly drunk. Of how Michael would croon in his ear and sleep in his bed, how she was grace note to Michael. But, oh, for himself, Maria was was pure rhapsody, and he couldn't stomach her thinking she was anything less. Not even for a moment.

The other night, when he couldn’t sleep he watched all twelve episodes of a show where a woman had sex with her fragile friend’s boyfriend. Then the friend walked into traffic. He empathized. _ The only person I would run through an airport for is you. _He empathizes. But he wasn’t some child acting out a dramatic scene. This was his life. The reality of the tragedy of it all, the tragedy of him. 

Because he knows a friend doesn’t do what Alex did. Doesn’t do what Maria did, either. So he freed her. He told her earnestly that he would help her or her mother with anything if they needed him. That Rosa missed her. That he was disheartened on Michael’s behalf that they had not worked out. He repeated that there was nothing in him for her anymore and that it was okay. She’d wept and he still couldn’t really understand why. 

Isn’t this what she wanted? He wasn’t angry and she was free of the guilt of him. He never seems to say anything just right. 

His mother used to tell him that he was no holiday before ending their bi-weekly phone call, a grin evident in her voice. 

He has tried his whole life to stay out of people’s way, to not take up more space than he has earned. To fight and win battles all on his own, to never task someone else with his own mess. 

It’s just him, he affirms to himself. There is an easiness, a solemn understanding in being no one’s real anything. He takes refuge in that often. If there is anyone in the universe that deserves to be showered in love, it is Michael. Being unworthy of him is a simple, constant sting. He has tried and he has failed. The failure is an ache so familiar, it sometimes feels akin to a sweet allay. Alex feels he could bathe in it at times. This feeling, a home away from a nonexistent home. Yet he still seeks him out, crawling toward it. Like a witch, a bad influence. The horror of his body; aching to ache. 

Michael is so strong and is trying to heal. Alex refuses to stand in the way of that. If Michael, needs a place to sleep, he has it. If he comes to him for bodily comfort, he can only deny him for so long. For it is selfishly his comfort, as well. But, he makes a promise to himself tonight, under the desert stars that he will try to be fit in mind and body again. He had a hold on it before and he could get it back. He must stop being a child.

Isobel said from the jump that her brother isn’t healing, but rather is “showing his ass” all over town and needs to get it together, like she is. Like they both were. Alex had snorted and told her bluntly that the two of them are poster children for not having it together. She flicked him on the nose hard. He just had it re-pierced a weeks prior and the impact made his eyes water.

As he clicks his seat belt into place, his phone lights up with three missed calls and five missed texts from Isobel. 

> Hey, can you give me a call when you get a chance? 
> 
> There is a staffing ~emergency~ at CD. Everyone is okay, just a flu going around. 
> 
> Michael is coming to cover for R. I’m sorry about this. I literally cannot back out of this event.
> 
> I left you a voicemail, but calls probably aren’t getting through? Hopefully Liz left the hotspot there so you are getting iMessages. Let me know when you get this. 
> 
> I hope you get these before he shows, babe. I’m so sorry! 
> 
> Will you shoot me a “i’m home” text when you can?

He takes a few shaky breaths before responding: 

> Hey! Sorry, I am just now getting these. Liz left the hotspot here, but I never use it. Nice excuse to get away from a screen. Signal was really spotty tonight. It went fine. A little awkward, but no big deal. Don’t worry. All good. Text you when I get back home in about an hour. 

As soon as he presses send, the typing bubble appears then disappears and then appears again. ‘Okay bb,’ she writes. 

He puts his phone back on Do Not Disturb and turns over the ignition. He opens up a playlist that he hasn’t perused in years, but has been dutifully transfer from device to device for over a decade. As he pulls away from the cave, tires pinching and crunching the ground below, he listens to Miss. Simone sing about her man going away. 

He makes a mental note to stop at the gas station to get a cheap espresso. 


	2. take your head apart

Michael turned to the Greeks for answers when he was nine years old. He read that some say they wrote the skies and created the stars. 

Max was always Zeus. Isobel was Hecate. He considered himself as Ares for a spell until he read about how the god liked to kill dogs. Then Michael feared maybe he was Hades. When he told Alex this in the safety of the shed, Alex had made a considering noise against Michael’s shoulder. Alex said that he thought Hades was a little misunderstood. He asserted that Michael was Orpheus. Or that maybe he was Hades. Either one, both if Michael fancied it. For it made no difference to Alex. He liked him just the same. The boy went all coy and shoved him away when Michael confessed, voice rough against his throat, “I think you’re a siren.” 

A month after trying to date and hiding Rosa, he finally told Maria the truth. She had run screaming from Max’s house, where they had set up a makeshift meeting place. Kyle hit Alex with his elbow as Liz scurried out after her. “See? That’s what we shoulda done. That’s a normal reaction. We were way too calm. Maria is the only normal one in the bunch." 

Alex didn’t fight him or Maria at all. He would have preferred yelling and throwing shit. With all his pride and simmering rebellion, that has never been Alex’s style. He could never give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they got to him. Even Michael. And Michael had wanted that. For all his claims of wanting easy and peace, Michael wanted to fight, anyone or anything. He wanted an excuse to scream and no one seemed to want to give it to him. All he got from Alex was a resigned smile, dead eyes, and a place to rest his head. 

Add on Michael mounting arrest record to the alien shit and Maria was fire-grilled done. She wasn’t his mother, she said. She has her own familial business to work through and doesn’t want to be involved with Mission Max at all. She and Liz haven’t spoken save for polite exchanges in weeks. She is convinced he could’ve healed her mother. She was unfeeling and true when she spoke how they burned three girls. How they ruined Rosa, her soulmate, her friend. 

The pretending is what killed Michael, the makeshift crash landing, and he lashed out. He just felt everything and nothing at once. He drank and fucked and fought and for awhile it felt damn good. Really damn good. 

And after watching Alex run to Liz’s side with a “fuck my bullshit, you _ need _ me right now,” Isobel declared herself #TeamAlex in this situation. He tried to be offended, but he gets it. This is her call to normalcy. If he is honest with himself, he kind of loves it. How easily his only family left loves Alex. It is like breathing for her. When he isn’t sleeping at Alex’s or in his truck, he is on Isobel’s couch. Isobel must know that it makes his belly all warm because she curls up next to him on the sofa and shoves her phone in his face. She lets him look at the growing number of her Instagram posts that feature a begrudging Alex. The caption always ending with #instagramlessalexander, #teamalex5ever, and the one that he knows probably drives Alex the craziest (and that’s why Isobel includes it every time): #babyboycouldMODEL. She would read them aloud with full inflection just to spite him: “To those of you asking if this absolute stud is my new boyfriend. Nope he is just my baeeb. He is gay and single and and smart and my DMs are OPEN to any and all interested parties.” and “baeeb (n.) before anyone else except Beyoncé; pronounced: bay-e-buh; used in a sentence: #instagramlessalexander is my one and only baeeb.” 

Alex had grinned at him, for the first time in a long time, when he tried to hand iPhone over to him. He said it was a thank you for fixing up some things around the cabin. He said it with a smile, like Michael should be excited. Michael scoffed and rebuffed the offer of charity. 

“Fine. Liz and I went in on it together and we were just trying to be nice. But, you know what, fine,” Alex had snapped, never again looking at Michael again, focused on the three computer screens he was working on. “Be stubborn and impractical. Keep your five year old, completely hackable Android. See if I give a fucking flying fuck. Charity? Yeah, why take a gift from friends when you can steal copper wire from the blind, old man that has given you work since were fifteen. Really making a point against the Man, Guerin. Sanders is enemy number one. Your political stance is unimpeachable. Kyle, get back down here, I need you for this part.” 

He ended up taking the phone. He is a legitimate genius, but he has little interest in learning the intricacies of a smartphone. It serves its function and that’s all he requires. Isobel made a page for the junkyard, insisting that people loved this kind of shit. Liz caught him looking at a photo Isobel posted, his fingers poised over Alex’s face on the screen. He was still trying to be sort of be with Maria then. He has no idea why she took such pity on him and showed him how to screenshot and screen record. She said lovingly, “This way. You can zoom in and you don’t have to worry about accidentally liking it. No wifi necessary. Also, get back to work or get the hell out of the lab.” 

A few days later, he got a text from Isobel. It was a photo of Alex driving with sunglasses on, concentration set into his features. 

> **Izzy**: Higher res for your collection. Free of charge 😉 
> 
> **Michael**: Liz needs to learn to keep her mouth shut. 
> 
> **Michael**: Thank you, Iz.
> 
> **Izzy**: Most welcome. I’ll keep ‘em comin!
> 
> **Izzy**: He doesn’t know about the nature of the texts, but he knows I am texting you right now. He says ‘Hello.’
> 
> **Michael**: Hello back. 

It’s good for them. He knows Alex’s lack of self-esteem is essentially clinical. Isobel is a lot of things, but a second rate cheerleader is not one of them. They also have a fair amount in common: athletic builds, pompous, being abuse survivors, killer fashion sense, distrustful of outsiders, liking animals, smirky, a propensity for over defending the merits of late 1990s horror flicks, trauma, taking the piss out of Michael, unearthly beauty, and dry, dark, borderline disturbing senses of humor. Cosmic, in their own special way. They bickered like they were married in another life. They attend a support group together that is called, much to everyone’s amusement: “Survivors Support Survivors.” 

They tried in vain to get Michael to go with them and he always declined. Sometimes kindly, sometimes not. 

* * *

Max had been gone over a month when Michael walked out to the Wild Pony alleyway, a lot drunk and a little hostile. He was just blowing off some steam. Though their relationship had been short-lived and ended badly, he can still grumble at Maria and she still fills his glass and takes his money.

Michael would be the first to admit that it is weird to be looking at a picture that your sister is in when you have your dick in your hand. But he was pissing against the back alley wall and Alex looked good that night. Good enough to eat, he always did. How beguiling Alex was with his nose ring was back in and flipped down, his hair a little longer. Michael wanted to make him cry out in all the good ways and some of the bad and then lick him all over. 

He stumbled the four blocks to where the geotag said his family was and mumbled to himself about tourists in winter as he trotted along. He found them on the trendy enclosed porch, twinkling lights over their heads. Michael thought that the lighting made them both look like angels. Angels in hiking gear, but his angels, nonetheless. He shooed the hostess from him and walked out to the back. Isobel and Alex were deep in conversation, as per usual. 

“Paintball?” He heard Alex question patiently. “For a PTSD support group?”

He watched from the door as Isobel winced and cowered. “You’re right. I’m stupid.”

“You are the furthest thing from stupid,” Alex said. He mashed his tofu pho down with his fork looking despondent. Fiona whined from her place under the table. Michael nearly did, too. He waved at him over Isobel’s shoulder. Alex grinned. “Hey, Guerin.” 

Isobel’s ponytail whipped as she faced him, her eyes bulged. “You can’t be here.”

Michael watched as Isobel’s face twitched. She did not like it when things didn't go exactly according to her plan. The twitching only increased as Alex cleared his throat and rose from his seat. “If he needs you—”

"You put that backpack down, right now. He doesn’t need me. We planned to hang out and I want to hang out. With you, person who bought me noodles.” She pinned him to the seat with her deadly withering gaze and he sagged back down. She was all demands that night. “Alexander, you made a commitment to me. You have blown me off all week. Do not do what you’re about to do. We are safe, we are just fine. We had plans. You have commitments. I wore _ hiking boots _ with _ practical socks _ for you today.”

“I didn’t want you to get blisters!” Alex insisted around a mouthful of noodles and bean sprouts. “I’m fine, it’s fine. I’m staying, mein fuhrer.”

He kicked a chair out for Michael. Isobel glared at it, as if the inanimate object had offended her personally. Alex jerked his head towards the chair twice. Michael obeyed and sat. Fiona’s head found his lap immediately. 

“Alex and I had plans,” Isobel said pointedly. 

‘Alex and I’ was her favorite combination of words. One on one, mandatory relaxing plans, if Michael accurately recalled the lecture from this morning. He remembered but doesn't relent and taunted, “Fiona seems to want me here.” 

Alex face softened. As his hands joined Michael’s on the dog’s back, he confessed that Fiona wanted him all the time. 

Isobel gagged dramatically and returned to her supper. Alex brushed Michael’s pinky with his own. He spelled out “R U OK?,” letter by letter, onto Michael’s palm. Michael had been torn between putting Alex’s fingers in his mouth right in the middle of the restaurant and shoving him away. He did neither. He half-shouted, half-slurred, “Liz kicked me out of the lab around four. Something about an inspection. So, I’m just being the town fuck-up in my off time. Taking advantage of DeLuca’s kindness.” 

Annoyingly, his sister could speak to his habitual lover without words. Alex raised his eyebrows. Isobel rolled her eyes. Alex shook his head. Isobel grumbled when Alex rose from his seat. He held himself stiffly, like a man in pain would. His voice was a little strained when he said, “You’re drunker than I thought, Guerin. I’m gonna hit the head and then bring you some Coke or something.”

“Why do you think sugary soda is the great panacea?”

“Because it my experience, it is.”

He shamelessly watched Alex’s ass as he walked away. By the time he looked at Isobel she was glowering. He snagged her root beer and took a gulp. “So, you tell him about the mind whammy yet? Or are you still treating him like your personal, life-size Skipper Doll.”

Isobel’s face soured even further. Her earrings brought out her eyes so much that Michael thought she ice could shoot from them if she really tried. She was all ice in voice, too, when she said, “You sure are one mean drunk when you wanna be. Stop threatening me. He is my friend. I have an actual, real friend for the first time in my life.”

Between the alcohol and love, any fight left collapsed out of him. The walk must have tired him. He took Isobel’s hand into his own. “Okay, Izzy. I hear you.”

“I cannot believe—Actually, I can believe that DeLuca would like you get piss drunk. Stellar friend strikes again.”

“It’s nearly eight,” he reasoned. Isobel snorted when he said, “She took my keys. Ease up on her. She’s got a lot going on.”

“Right, because my life is one non-stop dance party?”

“Never said it was, Iz. We all have shit. Be kind, right?” 

She pretended to consider it. Pursed her thirty dollar Kylie kit lips and said, “How about I do that when you actually try to smooth things over with Alex? Maybe? Just an idea. He is putting his life on the line for us. Maybe stop treating him like _ your _ combination punching bag and fuck puppet.”

“I’m trying. But, every time we get around each other, it’s like—look, at this point in time, we can’t seem to have a conversation without my dick, you know, ending up in his mouth. He is... sexual napalm.”

Isobel dropped her chopsticks and spoon into her bowl, the contents made a disgusting, wet throp. “One, I was enjoying this. Two, don't even quote John Mayer to me.” 

“Oh, how the tables have finally turned. What? You don’t wanna hear that he is a squealer? Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“Shut up, Michael,” she said with an edge. 

“I’m serious,” Michael pantomimed in his seat, his hips rose and fell. “If I do this thing where I bring all the power from my thighs and circle my hips—” 

Isobel slammed her foot down on his ankle so hard that he yelped and Fiona growled. “Why can’t you ever just shut the hell up?”

“What is your damage, Iz?”

Isobel pointed behind him to where Alex stood, skin all flushed, and so fucking beautiful, with a Mexican Coke from the shop across the street in his hand. He looked anywhere but the two of them. Michael watched as the man’s lovely mouth quivered for a few moments. Alex took a deep, horrifying breath. He looked Michael square in the face then spoke, stony and with a quirk of his said lovely mouth, “Charming as ever, Guerin.”

There was still a part of Michael that wanted to punish Alex. Punish them both, really. Michael wants to punished everyone. And yet, that particular slight made his stomach sour. “I didn’t mean—”

He held the glass bottle out to Michael. He took it and really felt like a heel when Alex said, “It’s nothing I’m sure your sister didn’t already surmise.” 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Isobel said with an air of feigned innocence as Alex situated himself back into the narrow chair delicately. 

“Sit back down, Guerin. I still have half a meal to finish here. I drove Isobel and you can’t very well walk home from here. Do you want food?”

Michael did want food. They ate together awkwardly for another thirty minutes until Isobel, blessedly, called it a night. On the drive home, he listened to Alex and Isobel bicker. (“What kind of self-respecting, 1990s baby, gay boy do you think I was?” “A repressed one.” “Even we love Britney. We especially love Britney.”) Isobel pumped one of the pop queen’s hits from when they were in high school through the vehicle's speakers. She and Alex sang along. Dramatically out of tune and unaffected, respectively. It’s the first time he had heard Alex sing since he last trip home in 2013. The sound of Alex harmonizing “on my radar” nearly sent him into a downward spiral in the back seat.

When they dropped Isobel off, she leaned over to Alex, pressed her head to his shoulder, and begged full volume in her tired vocal fry, “Don’t sleep with him, puh-lease.”

Michael kicked the back of her seat. Alex tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear and murmured, “What if it is just sleep?”

She looked between the pair of them half a dozen times before relenting. “Fine, I guess. Have at it.” 

“What about stargazing?”

Isobel rolled her eyes and elegantly stepped out of the car. Her voice was tight when she said, “Look at the stars with him, see if I care.”

“No,” Alex said with an indulgent smile. “You and me. It could be our activity with the group?”

Isobel’s eyes lit up again. “Oh! Sure. I will research suitable parks get back to you ASAP. Same time next week?”

She scrunched her nose when Alex gave her a double thumbs up. She blew Michael a few kisses and his heart hurt as he watched her retreating back until she was safely in her house. Alex looked in the rear view and asked as if he didn’t already know the answer, “Do you want me to drop you off at yours or, do you want to come back to mine?” 

They did end up sleeping together, in both senses. Then they fought as Michael left the next morning. Alex pled with him to not drive drunk anymore. Michael told Alex he thought he was miserable and that he should just admit that he always would be. Alex agreed, but stood strong. “Look, you're hurting. I understand that and God, I wish I could take it from you," he said and attempted guide Michael back into the house. Their foreheads touched briefly as Alex continued, "But that doesn't mean that you get endanger other living things or that you get to talk to me that way in my house or anywhere."

Michael recoiled and saluted on his way out. “Oh, aye aye, Captain. Nice therapy speak.” 

Alex looked at him sadly from the cabin porch. His big eyes all reproachful, his shirt only half on. He leaned against a support beam, one pant leg flapped in the slight breeze. 

Fuckin’ siren. 

As an adult, Michael knows the Greek myths are all horseshit. But the tales still bring him an aborted sense of comfort. 

On his drive back to the yard, he thought of the intoxicating feeling of power he experienced when Isobel and himself put just enough spark into Max’s chest to get the blood pumping again. Kyle said they had to get Max at least breathing or placing him in the pod would be pointless. He would be brain dead, if he wasn’t already. That little spark of power was euphoric. He would inject it willingly. Right into his veins, in between his toes if need be. Use that power to subdue all of their enemies. He would relish being covered in their blood and his love would kiss him in thanks. 

He could make him stay, he could make everyone stay. 

It’s tempting, but not today. 

Maybe he really was Hades, after all. 

* * *

He sat back in the soon to be opened bar a few days later, wearing the same clothes and licking his wounds. He and Maria kept their conversations to her family history and the weather, almost exclusively at this point. But, before all the mess, Maria had always been honest with him. He downed two beers in rapid succession before he cleared his throat. “So, I may have slept with Alex the other night. After you kicked me out.” 

The rag Maria was systematically running across the bar had stopped short. She stared, seemingly confused as she sought to confirm that impression that she was under, which was that he and Alex were actively avoiding one another for the time being. 

“Well,” he reasoned. “Sometimes we run into each other in town.”

Maria barked out a laugh. “Right.” She slammed both palms on the bar with enough force to jockey his bottle. “And how many times since I have become aware of the non-stop alien blast that is your lives have you ‘ran into’ Alex in town?” Michael asked if kissing counts. Maria hands balled into tight fists. “You know, I may actually hate you. For real. How many times?”

“Around five?”

“Vete a la mierda, hijo de puta. ‘Around five?’ I dumped you three weeks ago.” 

“Fuck, we’ve been good the past couple weeks or so, but I just wanted—”

“Oh, I think I know what you just wanted,” Maria had snapped as she abandoned him at the bar to retreat to her back office. 

Michael winced to himself, he had slashed his estimation in half for her sake and just plain flat out lied about the timeline. He wishes he could tell Maria the truth. That he just needed to feel close to Alex again. That he felt alone all the time and Alex was his person. That sex is the only way he knows how to do it without screwing everything up. He decides a half-truth is better than none. “He looked so, you know, relaxed that night. And then so sad in the morning.” He reached behind the bar to retrieve a bottle of whiskey. He craned his neck to assure that her back was turned. He took two deep pulls before he flicked it back into place with his mind. 

“So, you thought you give him a happy?” Her voice was filled with fake cheer. She came out with her pink jacket on, baseball cap in hand. “He always looks a little sad. He has had a dark aura since we were kids. That, punk snobbishness, and an infuriating level of competency is his brand.” 

Maria blamed him for a lot of things, things she dare not speak. Sometimes he wished that she just would say it. That he lied to her. That he willfully deceived her. How dare he cry to Alex and Isobel and wallow about his mother, when he very well could have saved hers? 

How dare he? 

Instead, kind Maria, turned her spite inward. “I hate that I can’t call him about this because I know he hurts. He hurts so badly and so do I. I hate that he isn’t my friend anymore and that most of it is my fault. I can’t really talk to him anymore because I didn't trust my instincts. I ignored my gift and I hate myself for that, do you understand me?” 

“That’s not just your fault.”

“Mostly is.”

Michael didn’t know what to say to that, so he ignored it. “Well, if it makes you feel any better I said some petty shit to Isobel about us and he overheard it. I don’t know why I did that.”

“Us?”

Michael drew his eyebrows together in a confused expression and took another drink of his beer. “Me and Alex.”

Maria sighed, dejected and disappointed. In what seemed to be a show to avoid looking at him, Maria dug around in her large purse for her keys. “You did it because you are essentially a drunk, overgrown toddler and you’ve inexplicably regressed to pulling pigtails.”

“I was gonna say it’s ‘cause I’m jealous.” 

And he is jealous of Isobel. He is jealous of the phantom of another man, of someone better. He is jealous of himself at eighteen. 

“Oh, sweetie, two things can be true at once. Do you know why he hangs out with Isobel so much? Why he is doing the group therapy thing with her?”

Michael leaned back, arms stretched wide. “Iz is pretty hard to say ‘no’ to.”

“And Alex is excellent at saying ‘no.’ He gets off on it,” Maria countered. “He knew you were a hot mess and Isobel is ticking time bomb without Max. He wanted to make sure that she, the person you love the most, was okay. You made it clear you didn’t want him around at that time. So, he threw himself on the Isobel grenade.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is because I feel it. Also, because that’s what he essentially told me when I gave him shit for hanging out with her. He also said some other not nice things about glass houses and kettles—He was very drunk and mixing a lot of metaphors.”

“He isn’t drinking anymore.”

“I know. Also, Isobel’s suggestion. Gross. They had to go and actually really like each other.”

He smiled into his beer, thinking of Isobel’s indignant squawk and Alex glared so hard that he shook a little when a woman in the pet store joked that Fiona’s service dog vest clashed with her natural coloring. 

She leaned forward on her elbows with such force that her earrings clanged. “The last time I saw them together, they were here looking for you. I said something about you being an adult and taking advantage of their kindness. I was then subjected to a ten minute lecture,” Maria shifted, showing Michael her right side. She dropped her mouth into a tired frown, she sniped in a perfect imitation of Alex, “First of all, Michael is a good person.” She switched to her left with put on a sneer eerily reminiscent of Isobel, “Second of all.” Then back to her right. “Thirdly, there are circumstances which—” She switched to her left and pretended to toss her hair over her shoulder. “Exactly. And another thing.” She faced him directly then. “I would find my own personal bulldogs charming, too.” 

Michael’s grin only grew. He rubbed his hands down the sides of the bottle. 

She smiled at him with a soft expression that seemed false to Michael’s eyes. “I can’t believe I ever deluded myself that you could be into me.”

“I was very into you.”

“Really, what’s my middle name?” She put her hat on, squared her shoulders, and dragged him by his ear to a therapist two blocks West. She dropped him in the waiting room chair and grabbed forms from the front desk. She confessed that an old booze-hound owns the practice and owes her a favor. She filled the paperwork out the best she could for him. She cut his complaints about money off at the pass. She laughed—loud, mocking and cruel—and sniped about his ‘precious sister.’ How Isobel charges one hundred and twenty bucks an hour for her ‘event planning bullshit.' She told him that Isobel would offer to pay. “And you’re going to say yes. You have people, Guerin. Really. I mean, your cup runneth over. You want a man or a woman?” Michael startled and stuttered until she clarified. “They have one lady and one dude that have openings in their schedules today.”

“Oh. A woman,” he said without a second thought and she checked the last box.

“Listen, I know this is kinda fucked up to spring on you, but I am worried. This is me olive-branching. I don’t know what else to do for you, man. Letting you just do your thing, isn’t working. Smoking you up, didn’t work. Trying to affection you in submission, doesn’t work. Dumping you, didn’t work. So, I’m gonna turn these forms in and if after I leave, you wanna get up and walk out, that’s cool. I just want you to have the option of talking to someone. Okay?”

Michael managed to nod. Her trendy sneakers squeaked against the tile flooring as she walked to the secretary's desk. He watched the flow of her skirt, the way the hem brushed against her delicate ankles. Before she left, she squatted down to his eye line. He could see down her shirt. She was beautiful, but it was such an ugly shirt. 

“How many times? When you said you were really trying with me.”

Michael wished that his guilt were immense. That he could summon up tears for her. But, he couldn’t. So, he held up one finger. It was not a lie, at least. 

“How many times just sleeping?”

Michael shrugged, unable to meet her eyes. After a spell, it became clear she wouldn’t leave without an answer. He made an infinity symbol in the air. 

She frowned and kissed his forehead. Said that she wasn’t angry, but that he should find another bar for the next few months. She gave him a few hard, but friendly slaps on the shoulder. “You and me, stud? We’re gonna be okay.” She made a vague gesture with her arms, hands flitted around grandly and gracefully. “We’re all gonna be okay. I can feel it. Give ‘em hell, kid.”

An hour later, when the homely woman at the desk called his name, he went back. 

To give ‘em hell. 

* * *

Therapy hits Michael Guerin like a mack truck. 

Dr. Katherine Leung is forty-one, tried, and a hardass. She smells of orange spice tea and generic fabric softener. Her oily hair is frequently piled on top of her head, her glasses are in a perpetual state of slipping down her nose. Michael likes her. Michael likes her a lot. He trusts her in a way he never fathomed he could, let alone this quickly. He was equal parts shocked and amused to find that by tweaking some words he can talk about almost all his shit. Being an extraterrestrial is actually a pretty good metaphor for being a loveless orphan who felt like he never fit in anywhere. Who woulda thunk? 

Michael found it easy to talk to her. Max used to say that Michael loved the sound of his own voice. Michael is self-aware enough to admit that it was a little true. 

He mentioned Alex in passing on the way out the door that first day. The cherry on top of his other issues: dead mom, brother in a medically induced coma, abuse survivor, an orphan, foster care, anger management issues, alcoholism, and, “Oh, yeah, and lately, I can’t seem to stop fucking my pseudo ex-boyfriend.” 

Katherine told him that it was noted.

Katherine was a small woman. Barely over five foot and maybe a buck ten soaking wet. He towered over her and had to bend at the waist when they hugged at the end of a session. But, Katherine made up for her lack of physical strength with her voice, which was sharp and booming. She had one of the best laughs in the history of human laughs. An unashamed loud cackle that came deep from her stomach, gathered in the delicate skin around her tightly shut eyes, hiccuped in her throat and snorted out from her nose. She has seen some shit. Michael could tell. He has always been able to smell it on people, like a suffering detection dog. She told him from the jump that they may not be a good fit. That she can be quite blunt. That he may need to try talking to a few different people before he finds someone who works for him. Michael took to Google immediately to make sure he was being politely booted. He mentioned it during the next session and she apologized. She said she would make sure to communicate in a clearer way next time. “It’s not about me choosing you, Michael. It’s about you choosing for yourself and feeling comfortable. For the record, I think you’re smart. I think you’re a kick. You make me laugh.” 

She then asked him to speak about a time when he felt happiest, the most loved. He had to fudge this one a bit, but Michael had spent his entire life concocting half-truths. He’s quite adept at it. He told Katherine that a few months ago his biological mother had contacted him. She was sick and dying, but he got to see her in hospice. He spoke about how beautiful she was and that she said she loved him. How they had all wept. In the fantasy, Alex was there, his chin tucked over Michael’s shoulder. He got the important bits across. How all his life he wanted his mother and the minute he got her, he had to watch her die. One last massive, final abandonment. That he associated Alex with her death. That he holds himself responsible, that she was out there waiting for him and he never looked. On the whole, it was a much kinder than reality. 

He knew for certain she was it for him on their fourth session. The session that he went to because Liz told him that she is going to have to start locking him out of the lab when he shows up drunk.

“How are things going with your on-and-off partner that you mentioned during our first meeting?” she had asked. 

He was testing limits then still, an old habit he has yet to break. Still poking to see if he could scandalize her. He laid it all out for her during that first session and she didn’t even flinch. He wanted to see if he could make her. “That question can best be answered by a supplemental query: Have you ever given an angry rim job? Because I have. Twice times in the past ten days.”

Without missing a beat, nor looking up from her notebook, Katherine answered, “No, but I have been on the receiving end of one. I don’t think this man is the central issue. I think the issue is that you are an abuse survivor and you are an alcoholic. You need to stop drinking.”

“I’m not an alcoholic.”

Katherine then used her irksome ‘therapy voice’ to ask him, “Would you say you have experienced negative effects whilst drinking?”

Michael set his mouth. He hated being patronized. He grated out, “I said, I don’t have a—”

“You told me during our last session—five days ago—that you recently shoved your partner—”

“He’s not—”

“Let me finish, please. I know this tough and I wouldn’t push you on this if I didn’t think you could handle it. Trust yourself.” Katherine waited for his permission. When he finally rolled his eyes in acquiescence, she continued, “You told me that you were drunk and belligerent. He found you with busted knuckles. You were literally spitting up blood. He and your sister got you to her house and you were throwing your body around. They could not get control of you. You accidentally shoved your partner to the ground. This caused him to knock your sister over and split her lip open. You scared them, no matter how many times Alex tells you that you didn’t. What was it your sister said to you after?”

Michael slammed his eyes shut. Childlike, see no, hear no. When Katherine asked again, he managed to answer after a few attempts, “That she was sad about Max, too. That she doesn’t like me when I drink.”

That was truly terrible part. While he wasn’t thrilled about the split lip, the fact of the matter was that Isobel had done her fair share of literally slapping some sense into him over the years. 

The fear of him, though. The disappointment. That cut something fierce. 

Alex in the dirt, hissing in anguish and grabbing at his thigh was a close second. 

“Do you like you when you drink, Michael?”

“I never like me.”

“We need to work on that. From what I see, there is a lot about you to like. In order to start doing that work, you need to stop drinking. I’m going to get some information on local AA meetings. I want you to go to one. Tonight. Just give it a try. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it is worth a shot. Next time, we’ll discuss whether or not you think an outpatient program would be beneficial for you. Hurt people hurt people. Let’s stop the cycle, Michael.” 

“Jesus," he exhaled. "Take a man out to dinner first.”

“I’m not here to be your buddy, Michael." She licked the ball of her pen to scribble down an address and time on a post-it to hand to him. “If that’s what you want, join a bocce league. Oh, I meant to ask, since you two have issues communicating, have you ever considered writing him a letter telling him how you feel? You wouldn’t have to send it, but it may help you gather your thoughts.” 

“I ain’t much of a writer.”

“I’m not asking for a soliloquy.”

“Yeah, I don’t reckon I’ll be Austen-ing it up anytime soon. ‘Be not alarmed, good sir, upon the receiving of this letter.’ Yeah, not my thing.” Katherine shook her head. Michael couldn’t stop himself from adding, “I wasn’t always like this, you know? I wasn’t.”

* * *

The Max shit ain’t sorted, not by a long shot, but at least Michael feels as though he can breathe now. He can get out of bed. He can do his work without needing to be six beers chased with acetone deep. He has hope. He has to. Hope that Max will be healed and return to them. That they all can heal. Hope is as dangerous to Michael as fire is to gasoline. But that hope is the only thing currently keeping Isobel and Liz upright, so he stokes it every chance he gets. 

Liz said his work is better. It is more linear, easier for her to pick up where he left off. 

He has been seeing Katherine every Tuesday and Thursday and going to AA on Friday nights for almost five months now. He doesn’t do much talking at AA. But, he is getting more comfortable with each meeting and he feels better. He thinks it is actually working. The prospect frightened him for awhile and still does a little, that he has the right to feel better. 

Michael is distracted today and Katherine is noticing. He keeps trying to snap back, and listen to her suggestions for managing his temper and triggers. She is talking about arrested development, but Michael is thinking about how the last time with Alex ended. He can’t believe that it has been over a month since they’ve lain together. Now all he can think about how Alex rocked back on his cock that evening all clumsy, frantic, and so, so sweet. It haunts him. Alex in control and powerful, taking whatever he needs from him. It’s Michael’s favorite part when Alex presses Michael’s hands below his own navel, their palms slick with sweat. He whispered reverently,_ I can feel you. You’re so good to me. You make me feel so good. _ He had made Alex come untouched, oversensitive, chanting, and twisting. Michael finished in him and crooning hot in his ear, _ That’s it, darlin’. _The sense memory still makes his eyes water, his stomach clench; makes his balls and prick ache. 

It has been nearly two weeks, but seeing him in the cave, in the flesh, actually getting to touch him again? Really has fucking thrown Michael off his game and he is still walking a tight rope on a good day. 

Katherine asks if he would like to talk about what is making him so emotional. He wagers now is a good a time as any, so he recounts it to her in bits. Left out the more anatomical stuff and focused in on the emotion, the guilt, on how Alex seemed to be crying easier than usual. And by that Michael means crying at all. How after, Michael laid back on the sofa and maneuvered Alex onto his chest. He fussed with the sweat matted hair at the base of Alex’s skull. Alex ghosted fingers down Michael’s flank, created symbols there. They had spoken softly about what had happened in the days since they had last seen one another. Alex started to cry out of anger over losing Maria and how it was all his own fault because he hadn’t been ready when Michael was. His breath and tears wet on Michael’s shoulder as he recounted that he was so angry and hurt and how a small part of him hates her. Michael had whispered, sincere and desperate that it had meant nothing. Alex said that was a lie. “Nothing, nothing really at all,” Michael repeated. Alex had moaned in pain at that, said that made it worse. 

He groaned out that he is bad for him and how Michael should leave and never come back because clearly Alex can’t control himself. How Michael said Maria understood what it was like to be left behind, but didn’t Michael remember that Alex’s mother left him? Left him alone with his father? Did he forget that? Or, did Alex just not matter? He thought he mattered. He is so angry with himself for thinking it, how he should be bludgeoned for speaking it, the assumption that he has the right to be hurt by anyone or anything. After all he had done. 

It ended with Alex curled up on the sofa as far away from Michael as he could manage, muttering to himself about how he needed to stop crying _ right now _. Michael couldn’t follow the logic train and had just wept himself hoarse into the curve of his lover’s back out of frustration. So many times, one of them has looked at the other, eyes pleading to let them fix it. Let me fix it, let me take it from you. 

He tells Katherine, how almost six months ago, was the first night Michael came to him when he couldn’t sleep. He was with Maria then and half came to Alex looking for a fight. Alex wrapped him in a blanket, propped against pillows so he couldn’t roll over onto his back in his sleep. Alex slept slumped against the closed bedroom door. In the morning, Alex had plead with him, told Michael that he needed help. He chased Michael out to his truck, crutch thumping against the dirt. “Please, let me help you, Guerin. Let me find someone or something to help you, please.” Michael laughed. Alex lent through the driver side window and told him that he could come back any night he needed to, that he didn’t sleep well, either. 

Michael says that he is a grown man now and is coming to accept that it isn't possible. Some people can’t shake it. Some people just can’t be fixed. 

Katherine sighs. “That poor man. He is really struggling with something. It must be very difficult for you to see someone you love in this state. How did this encounter make you feel?”

“Oh, you know. The usual. Helpless, useless. Like one inch cock.” 

“That’s understandable. Is this type of—I hesitate to call it an outburst,” Katherine hums, taking a moment to clean her glasses. She perches them back on her nose and tries again, “Is this kind of event _typical_ for him?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean—” He feels like he is betraying Alex. Outburst? Event? Alex isn’t crazy. Did he say something that made him sound crazy? 

“Take your time, Michael.”

Michael takes a deep breath as instructed before he answers, “It’s never been this consistently bad.”

“Okay. Alright, I know you mentioned that his family isn’t in the picture. But, have you spoken to one of your mutual friends about your concerns?”

“That isn’t really our style,” he shrugs and Katherine tuts. “I haven’t said anything to our friends. Isobel is the only one that knows that we were still, you know, engaging.”

“In sexual activity.”

“Yes, my sister, his new best good pal, is the only one that knows that we are still occasionally ‘engaging in sexual activity.’”

“Occasionally?” Katherine teases. “Up until a couple months ago, you were having sex with Alex on a more regular basis than all of the married couples I see.”

Michael cannot help but to preen for moment. “Yeah, well. Whatever. That’s in the past. I’m being good now.”

“I don’t think it would be a bad idea to talk to Isobel about patterns you are noticing. It’s not a betrayal to express concern. Liz has known him since they were kids, right?” Then Katherine's eyebrows quirk, her mouth twists like she bit down on the rind of a lemon. There is a precise, lovely comedy in the way she drops her pen on her notepad, her hands waving in a fury of purple nails and clanging bracelets. “Whoa, wait. Back it up. Back it the fuck up. Did you say Maria?” She asks as she flips back numerous pages before she repeats the name again, baffled, “The friend? The one who brought you here? That knows Larry?” 

He realized in that moment, regrettably, that he had never mentioned the Maria situation to Katherine out of what he had convinced himself was shame, but he is quickly coming to realize was due to the fact that he is just a remiss ass.

“Yeah,” he admits. “The friend.”

“Oh,” she groans. “Oh, you silly, self-destructive boy. When was this?”

“Couple days after my mom died. And then Max, you know, happened. It didn’t last very long. Couple of weeks, at most.”

Katherine groans louder with every detail, rubbing her temples. “Oh, you neglected to mention this.” 

“Just give me a minute to explain myself,” he says and he talks and talks and talks. He attempts to explain his rationale, the sound logic, until he suddenly stops. “Wow, I am a thoughtless prick. It’s not her job to fix me. ‘Easy’? What did I mean by that? My brain was so scrambled. I can’t—I can’t really remember the whole first month after my mom. I was on drunken autopilot. But, you know, me going through something isn’t an excuse. Oh my, God. Isobel is right. I _ am _the patriarchy.” 

Katherine tells him he’d got it in one. 

Maria is a good person. He misses her. He is going to be a good friend to her, like she deserves, when she is ready. He is gonna bring her the tackiest teddy bear with the biggest “sorry i was an asshole, please be my bffl? y/y?” sign that humankind has ever known. It’ll make her laugh. He knows it. He knows he loves her now. He knows the way he loves her. He knows he could have loved her like she wanted to be in another life, maybe. It feels pretty okay, but it is just a small part of what he is working towards. 

“You mentioned something about what you needed at the time. How would you feel if while you were getting your needs met by Maria, Alex was getting his needs met by other men?”

Michael sniggers, unable to stop himself from laughing at the mere notion. “No way. Not who he is. He is cagey about sex.”

Katherine leans back and crosses her arms. Michael decides that he thinks she is making a very annoying face. “I never said anything about sex.”

“He isn’t. He wasn’t.”

“Right. Because he has a little shame in regards to sex.”

“A little is an understatement.”

“Sure. Clarify this for me: the very first time this man ever had penetrative sex was with you when you were teenagers. Immediately after, his monster of a father found you two in your safe space and hurt the both of you. Pretty badly, yes?” 

“That was over ten years ago.” 

Katherine huffs, crossing her legs and resting her chin on her hand. “I wonder why he felt panicked about people knowing about you two with the constant, looming threat of his father in his head. I wonder why he feels shame about liking, feeling immense pleasure, when you perform certain acts on him. His subconscious response to that is watching you get your hand literally smashed to pieces with a hammer.” She leans over the table and takes that should-be mangled hand into hers. “Michael, a ghastly thing happened to you both. A truly horrifying thing. One of the worst things I have ever heard. Please don’t minimize it. Now, you said he was doing pretty good for a couple months there before his dad died, before he left the military. Before he lost his structure. He may very well have been having something ‘fun and easy’ with a man. And good for him if he was.”

The mere vision of Alex on his back for someone else, with someone could take advantage, with a stranger, causes Michael to snarl. 

“And that,” Katherine exclaims as she points at him with her pen. “That right there is what is not okay,” she shakes her head wildly, points even more emphatically. “It’s just not okay. So uncool. For him and for you, kiddo. You can feel and act as you please. Free will, right? You wanna be with Maria? A result of that is having a hand in destroying a lifelong friendship—”

“That part wasn’t my fault.”

“You are absolutely right. That was Maria and Alex’s choice to dissolve the friendship.”

Michael asserts that it was Alex's choice. 

“Her choice to take a chance with you. Her right. I’m not here villainize her. I don’t think she is a villain. I don’t think that Alex believes her to be the villain. I do think she made a choice, though. And, as a result, it is his right to voice that a boundary was crossed, reestablish that boundary, and stick to it. You do not get mandate someone else’s feelings or declare how quickly or slowly they move on from something on their own time, in their own space.”

Someone else could come into Alex's space now. Someone who wouldn't know how to hold his legs so they wouldn't cramp. Someone who would see him vulnerable and make terrible, irreparable mistakes and not even know they had done damage because Alex would never speak of the phantoms to anyone else. Michael's head pounds as he remembers that choking is fashionable now, essentially mainstream. _Come on. Choke me, cowboy_, a woman had requested of him. Michael had nearly vomited. Humans need oxygen, he told her. You don't know me and humans need oxygen. He saw an airway clamped down on once. He watched as legs scrambled against the shed floor for purpose and with the chiefest of animal impulses: to breathe. The sickly grate in his darling's voice after the brute did his deed haunts him still. It’s an act of rage to him. He knew that Alex felt the same.

Michael rocks in place, scratching his beard, and picking at his teeth with his thumbnail.

“The mere hypothetical of Alex moving on seems to be making you very uncomfortable.”

“Well, yeah.” Michael makes a few passes through his hair with his fingers. “I know from experience that I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect of that.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, as I am still learning to speak Michael, but I think I am getting it. Someone, maybe in this room, uh, had a temper tantrum because he thought another boy was playing with his toy? Maybe?” When Michael adverts his eyes, Katherine laughs. “Oh, boy. Spill. When was this?”

“And saw him with this dude, at a bar. You know, an Idris Elba-looking motherfucker. He kept smiling at Alex and he put his arm around him—” 

“Hmm. Sounds like a real bastard,” Katherine deadpans. 

Michael explains how he saw them and kind of freaked. He had been trying to do what everyone suggested and just stay away from Alex until things settled down. But, he had done that and now some random dude was touching him on a bar porch. He just stormed in there half-cocked. Looking back, it is so childish and embarrassing. It turned out that Idris Elba wasn’t so much a stranger, as a painfully straight, married airman that was almost twenty years their senior. By the time Michael learned that information, it was far too late. The handsome man held his hand out to shake Michael’s and he just fumed. Alex immediately placed himself between them with slight, but tender, annoyance settled into his forehead and shoulders.

“Guerin,” Alex said as he soothingly rubbed Michael’s sternum through his shirt. “I just had a beer for the first time in months and I’m so tired. Will you drive me home?” 

And then they had sex on the couch and Alex cried and a month later, here they are. He mentions seeing him at a friend's house and trying to read his apology list from memory. Though, he leaves out the bit about how that night he shattered ten street lights as he was trying to find a parking spot close to the bar and how it was wasn’t a friend’s house, but a cave where his alien brother is being held.

Katherine is silent for about a minute after he finishes. She clears her throat. “First thing: that is, like, pathological. You understand that, yes?” Michael nods, face burning red with embarrassment and fury from the memory. “Two, he is not fucking this guy, or any other guy, and you know it. So, take a breath. Three, thank you for finally sharing the details of this relationship between you and Maria and this jealousy issue. I know this is difficult for you to talk about.”

“There is no me and Maria,” Michael beseeches, desperate and a little sad. 

“Okay. I knew I was missing something, but I didn’t want to push you. It didn’t make sense to me. The digging at him, the shaming for isolating himself. From what you have been describing he is trying so desperately to give you what you are asking for. It is not all on you and he has made mistakes. And, just to rip the band-aid off here, it’s—it’s abusive, Michael,” she says in an infuriatingly neutral tone. For that bit of honesty, Katherine is forced to witness Michael’s full body flinch. “Intent matters, as you once said. Then also, you told him that loving him was worst thing that ever happened to you—”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You did at the time. That was your truth. But that _ and _ the shared trauma _ and _ this whole Maria thing _ and _ your possessiveness,” Michael blushes crimson despite himself when she adds, “Which if that’s y’all’s thing in the bedroom, that is one thing, but that _ and _ you still occasionally fuck him but you tell him being with him is difficult _ and _on top of that all of his own shit. Alex seems to be stuck in this infinite apology loop. ‘I’m sorry for existing. I'll make up for me. I’m sorry for existing.’ On and on and on. It is not okay for you to willing be a part of that destructive process. For him or for you, kiddo. I mean, just nail him to a cross in the town square at this point.”

Michael actually laughs at that, though he was actively fighting back tears.

Katherine laughs, too, glad that Michael is still listening. “It would be a lot more subtle, trust me. I think you push away the people you know love you the most when you get scared. You want to be loved and you are and they can be taken from you and that’s scary. Your mother was taken from you. Your brother is sick. You could take this risk with Maria and you could be combative and throw yourself back into destructive behavior because you knew Maria didn’t know the whole story.”

“Alex was the one always walking away.”

“Yes, partially because he couldn’t very well go AWOL. But I get that the context is less relevant than the emotion right now. But, I do encourage you to absorb his lack of choice in some of the instances that we discussed. I think that will help you. In either moving on from him or moving on with him. But, still, he walked away on his own accord sometimes. It fuckin’ sucked. He is not perfect. He doesn’t get a free pass. It hurt you and he knows it.” She is starting to piss Michael off and is using the ‘therapy voice’ again. “What else did he always do?” 

“Come back around. Say he was sorry. Try.”

She taps the side of her nose. “You had a shit year in a shit life, Michael. You made some mistakes, but you are a good man and you deserve to have what you want out of life. Right?”

When he nods, Katherine claps her hands together and exclaims that this was massive progress. She then digs through her desk and Michael grins, shaking his head. She removes the sparkly box he has come to know well and opens it, making mock cheering noises. He rolls his eyes and chooses a small sticker adorned with stars that says to ‘Reach and keep going!!!!’ 

She closes the box and asks if he wants Alex to be just his friend.

“I don’t know, doc. Is it normal to want to hold just your friend down and fuck ‘em until he cries?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for you?” Katherine told him that she was going to ask a very fair question: “Have you ever had a friend that you didn’t sleep with?” Couching it with the detail that Liz is demonstrably off limits and does not count. Katherine seems to think that Liz is his sister-in-law and he has never bothered to correct her. 

“You." He wets his lower lip, leaning back in the love-seat with his legs spread. He quirks an eyebrow. “Yet.”

“There he is, the master of deflection. Very good, Michael, very good. Let’s try something else, instead then. If I were, uh, let’s say, twenty-one year old Alex. what would you want to say to me?”

Michael hesitates. He is immobilized by the memory of twenty-one year old Alex coming home and finding Michael and a random woman. Which Michael planned to have happened because he was twenty-two and angry and wanted to show the world, wanted to show Alex, that he was fine on his own. That no one owned him. Alex had certainly walked away that time. 

“Would you like me to turn from you?” Katherine's arms are poised to spin her chair around.

Michael rumbles out quickly, “Thank you. I loved you. I love you, now. We didn’t do anything wrong. I ain’t your fault. What happened to me, I mean. What happened to us. When we were kids. All we did was love each other.”

Katherine leans forward and says with a solemn expression, “And look what my love got you.”

“Well, your prick of father is six feet under now, so. And you’re a grown man and I’m so tired. You love me as much as you constantly say, then stop crying and walking away and just fucking be with me. Man up.”

She sounds so like Alex when she says softly, “I’ve read that complex trauma can rewire the brain. I am trying. I’m trying to fix it, to fix me.”

“You wanna talk to _me_ about trauma?” He hates the word trauma. The clinical nature of it. He only ever utters it with a pithy and dismissive tone. 

The spell is broken and all traces of Alex are gone from the air. Katherine slouches back in her chair and covering her eyes with her hand. “God, you’re so brutal.”

“What?”

“You’re savage, as the kids say,” Katherine asserts, voice slightly raised with her bun bouncing with every movement. “Same could be said about you, by the way,” Katherine points at him, pen in hand, and stage whispers. “Grown man. Gonna be thirty in a few months. Fully grown man. A fully grown man who is very hard on himself and this man that he claims to love.”

“I do love him.”

“I know you do. He was there when your mom died? Hospice, right? And he came to you, hat in hand and you decided to try something with his oldest friend.” Michael flinches again. “Michael, it’s the truth. He hurts and you hurt. Sometimes you hurt each other, that’s having an intimate relationship, sadly. You seem to understand that with the other people in your life, but you won’t give him or yourself an inch.”

“Oh, I don’t know, we gave each other plenty of inches over the years.”

Katherine tries and fails to hold in a smile. “Get that smutty look off of your face. You are as hard on him in here as you on yourself. And Michael, I gotta tell you, you are your own personal bully. Why will you give everyone else endless line, but not him? Certainly not yourself. Your siblings seem to—”

“I’m not ready to talk about them.”

“Understood. But, I do want you to think about how and why you place them in a position of grace and power. Consider whether or not they extend you the same courtesy.” 

It’s a truth he knows in his bones, but he dare not vocalize. Not yet. Not maybe ever. Isobel, the being he was the most loyal to, had called ten years of torture a comfortable lie. It was easy for her to believe that Michael would—that he even could—kill three girls. 

The loss that came with that comfortable lie was immeasurable. Not just his sense of self, but his last chance at hope and normalcy slipped through his fingers. The truth that if he would have let Max heal his hand at the time and told Alex what he was, the boy would have believed him. Accepted him, even. _ I wanna know about you _. Michael would have had a real chance. He could’ve gone to school. They could have run away to Seattle or Boston, somewhere far from the desert. They could have taken Isobel with them. They both would have had a fucking chance at something. Something undoubtedly goddamn good. 

But his mother. 

He wouldn’t trade that time with her. He couldn’t. Not even for them. 

Michael has learned. He learned that given human(ish) survival instincts, and the strong chemical and physical reactions they have to trauma, it’s far more likely for people to recall dangerous, violent, or emotionally volatile situations than the calm, loving ones. His most traumatic memories involve Alex, but he was never the cause. They had hurt each other, sure. But, with his infuriatingly clear head, intent does matter to him now. Katherine asks him to close his eyes and try an “I want” statement.

“I want Max to be okay, so that Isobel will be okay. I want to be able to sleep. I want to—I want permission to leave. I want permission to be, I guess. I want to take back mistakes. I want my—I want Alex. I want him to want to come with me. I want him to want what he wants. I want my mom back. I don’t want to be alone anymore. And if I can’t have any of that, I want to drink.” Michael lets out an annoyed sigh as the tears begin to fall. They are unwelcome and constant, of late. 

Katherine hands him a tissue. “Okay, Michael, tough love time.”

Michael lets out a choked off laugh, but takes the tissue. “You were just handing out soft love? When did I miss that?”

“We can’t fix Max,” Katherine says bluntly, as per. “We can’t bring your mom back and that fucking sucks. It is bad. But, what we can do is work on what you can control. You have already made great strides with the drinking and anger management. Another thing you can control is your relationship with Alex. At least, your part in it. So, you need to decide whether or not you want to try to make it work with this man. This indecision, this needless guilt, is causing you immense distress. You said when you came to me that you need to clear your head because it was affecting your work. I think working towards some clarity on your feelings will help you. So, you don’t have to make a decision this very second, but you need to take stock of what you want. Because this situation isn’t fair and you know that. This up, down, on, off thing.”

Michael’s mouth is a tight pinch, tasting bitter in his throat. “He did it to me.”

A soft, considering noise comes from the back of Katherine’s throat. “Michael, the tit for tat thing is childish and it's beneath you. Also, I don’t think the situations are one to one. If you wanted to punish him for the mistakes he made throughout his time in the military, you have accomplished that really mature goal. If you can’t move that passed that shit, that’s understandable. But, if you want a life with him, then we need to work up to having that conversation with him. It will probably be a series of conversations, knowing what I know about you two. I can be there for some of them, if you like. Either way, while you are thinking about it, my suggestion to you is that, you know, cease with the one-on-one intimate scenarios with him.”

He grumbles, pushing his hair back. Michael pouts when Katherine tells him that maybe he needs to think about why he is fighting so hard to convince her that seeing Alex alone is a necessity when it isn’t. 

“I haven’t slept at his place in two months. We haven’t fucked in almost a month.” 

Katherine snorts unattractively. “Boy, you are a damn liar. I know that is a lie. At _ least _the sleeping part.” 

Michael doesn’t even bother to argue with her on that one. “Yeah, well, takes two to tango. It’s not like I trip him so he falls on my lap, doc.” 

“You are absolutely right. Look, I’m not the kid’s doctor, but from what you have been describing, I don’t think he is the head-space to tell you ‘no.’” Michael’s eyes must have been the size of saucers, because Katherine throws her notebook to the ground and makes an urgent time out motion with her hands. “Not like that, Michael. That’s not what I meant. Michael, can you look at me? Do you understand that is not what I meant? I meant in the sense that he is in a precarious head-space and you have passionate, loving physical relationship. It is a comfort that people in the best place emotionally cannot pass up easily. Okay? Michael, okay?”

He sniffles, trying to refocus himself. “It’s pretty fuckin’ tough for me to pass up, too. But, he still sometimes gets so closed off after. I know the situation sucks, but—It hurts my feelings, it is like he is ashamed of me. Which, you know, I get it if he is.”

“Have you talked to him about that?” Michael shakes his head. “It’s his defense mechanism. It’s how he learned to survive. It’s not a reflection on you. It’s not about you. He clearly feels very safe with you. But, when he is scared or unsure or triggered, he reverts. And from what you have, the aftermath of sex can be a trigger for him. That doesn’t make it right, but—Michael, he is never going to respond to things exactly the way you do. Why? Because, he’s not you. If you want someone that is a carbon copy of you, that’s okay. But then you have to work on accepting that a relationship with Alex is not sustainable.” 

“I just don’t know if I’m ready.” 

“AA suggests that you stay single for a full year.”

“Fuck ‘a year.'" Michael loudly blows his nose. “I haven’t been single since I was seventeen. I wanna apologize for my shit. I wanna work on our stuff with him now, not apart. I think I’m nearly there. With this.”

“I think you’re right. With this, you are getting close. I also think we have shit-ton of work to do with all the other, just, nightmare-ish stuff you have been through. This is not easy. I’m proud of you, kid.” 

He starts to make a joke about how for a genius, he can be pretty fucking stupid sometimes when his phone rings. He apologizes to her as he digs the accursed phone out from his front pocket. He tells Katherine he needs to take the call when he sees Liz’s name on the screen. “What’s good, babydoll?” he answers, tossing a wink in Katherine’s direction, who meets it with a long-suffering look. 

Liz cuts to the chase. “When I left work yesterday, Alex was being admitted.” 

“Alex is in the hospital?” 

Katherine mouths “speaker” as she waves her hands. 

After Michael tells Liz that he is not in the room alone, she prattles about exhaustion and her frustration with Alex for his general stubbornness, Katherine moves from her desk chair to the couch. Michael doesn’t even realize he is gripping her hand until she squeezes back. Liz keeps repeating that Alex is alive and fine, just resting and a complete idiot. Michael swallows past the lump forming in his throat. It takes a few attempts before he can get out, “Did he ask for me, or somethin'?”

“I mean, kind of, yes? I don’t know.” Liz seems to battling with herself, he hears her mutter, “No, you know what? No. Screw this.” She states directly into the receiver, “Yes. Yes, he did. In his own way. He is on the third floor.”

“But, what if—”

“Michael, my dude. I love you, but I honestly don’t have time for this. You know I don’t have time for this. He is alive and a complete dumbass. Just pushed himself too hard. I still think he would like to see you even though he is not on his deathbed. Go or don’t. Either way, will you go and feed the dog? I did it last night before I met with Rosa. Why would someone get a dog in the middle of all this?” she asks, exasperated.

After Liz hangs up, he stares into the small black mirror for a few moments. Katherine asks if he wants to see Alex. Michael manages a sharp nod. Katherine places a soothing hand on his knee, tells him to take three deep breaths, go home, wash the motor oil out from under his nails, change into something comfortable, and call her before he goes in. 

* * *

Michael may have taken the quickest shower on record. He doesn’t have anything comfortable to change into, just some well-worn jeans. He throws on those and his boots in the Airstream and then a fresh t-shirt, and his jacket on his walk to the truck. He is using one hand to tap his thigh and the other to turn into Alex’s yard, when Katherine’s disembodied voice asks, “What are you going to do if he says he doesn’t want you there?”

Michael jerks the wheel, straightening the tires, and hums to himself. He pulls the e-brake back and picks the cell phone up from the passenger seat before getting out. He can hear Fiona’s barking coming from the bedroom. He presses the mobile closer to his ear. “I guess I’ll leave then. Respect the boundary.” 

He means it even though the thought of any boundary between Alex and himself makes Michael feel physically ill. Everything is so wrong, he got so much wrong, but he still has time to make it right. For a moment, he feels right and sure in his own body. A foreign feeling for him outside of work and sex. He revels in his fleeting elation. 

“You will? Exhaustion can make people a little loopy.”

“I promise. Hear and see what I actually hear and see. Not what my past tells me I hear and see. I know—I know he loves me. And I accept that.” 

“That’s real good work, Michael. Really nice. I know this is sooner than we planned, but—”

“Life doesn’t follow a plan, I can’t dictate when and where people need me, yeah, yeah.”

Katherine laugh is soft and welcome in his ear. “Gold star. Text me how it goes, if you can.” 

Michael hangs up as he enters the cabin. Save for his books, stereo, and a large painting that hangs over the couch, Alex still hadn’t added anything personal yet. Seemingly choosing to keep Sheriff Valenti’s things just as they were. Alex whispered to him in the middle of the night, to soothe Michael down from a nightmare that Kyle had bought the beautiful reproduction Death and the Maiden and told Alex that this was his home now. That this was what Kyle’s father really wanted, but Alex wasn’t ready yet. He told Michael that same night that he felt like he was living in the Angel of Death’s house. “You’re right. If my father wasn’t lying then Jim was a monster.”

“He was good to you,” Michael had whispered back as he pet Alex’s hair and tried pulled him closer.

“He was,” Alex admitted as he removed himself from Michael’s soft hold and turned back over. “He really was. What does that say about me?” 

Michael didn’t have an answer. Alex mumbled that they should move, that there were too many ghosts of uncertainty in the house. They both let the idea hang in the air and fell into an untroubled sleep. 

Fiona is protective as all get out, but she loves Michael. They have an understanding, Alex first. He spends a few minutes sitting on the couch, running his hands down her back, collecting himself. He finds the unopened condom that Alex had tossed out of his hands the last time he was here in between the cushions. When he feels the telltale sign of tears pricking at his eyes, he breathes through it. 

He dumps an overflowing cup of kibble into a bowl and walks the dog out onto the porch. While Fiona barks at the lovely Inca doves and eats, Michael takes to the bedroom and shoves a blanket, phone charger, headphones, Listerine, and a loveworn copy of _ Watership Down _ into the tattered backpack he found by the front door. 

He allows himself a few moments to lay on the bed that he has slept in so many times over the past few months. Alex shoved it up against the wall without windows for him on his third night here. It was for him, Michael knew. Alex, through his time in the military, had learned to sleep anywhere. He once found the slightly younger man fitful and dosing against Isobel’s kitchen counter. Michael needed to sleep with his back to the wall. Back to the wall and Alex at his front was even better. The Nina Simone record leans, unplayed, atop the bed side table. A makeshift family photo.

He pulls out sweatpants, boxers, and a well-worn hoodie from his dresser. He presses the ugly sweatshirt, with its discolored armpits and threadbare elbows, to his nose before tossing it into the backpack. He pulls Alex’s forearm crutch out from the back of his closet. He grabs a handful of shirts from the overflowing dirty laundry and puts them on the couch and in Fiona’s seldom used dog bed. 

He goes down in the bunker which acts as Alex’s new, makeshift base and takes in the still running lines of code, green on black. Three small trash cans are lined up along the far wall, all filled with soda cans, beer bottles, and clif bar wrappers, respectively. All the cans neatly crush, all the wrappers in tight little balls. There are five open notebooks on the desks, which he can make out in Alex’s neat, precise hand have to do with bomb and Caulfield, all coded. Save for one, a large red binder that Michael hadn’t seen Alex with before. Before he closes it, he can make out: detention time line, statistics about closest center, a list of senators to call with checks next to them, the workings of an action plan, wanting to know how many migrant children were currently in NM, and scribbled in the corner “SEC says being combat vet = leverage. Could get through to Gov. Grisham directly; call on MONDAY.” He slips the binder into the open drawer. 

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes for a few beats before moving on. 

The next notebook is a black Moleskin with the orange clearance sticker still on it. On the page it is open to the ink is dark and fresh. It is Alex’s personal to-do list:

  1. Check datalog XM for info on blood types (confirm findings with L and M)
  2. Buy Iz & M birthday present (Max, too?)
  3. <strike>Contact ABQ county archivist </strike>
  4. Defrag back up 
  5. <strike>Print info on home health aide for Maria </strike>
  6. Determine related key for new file 
  7. Call Frantel back. 
  8. Call Maria to confirm OK for lunch with Mimi before ABQ trip w/L. (Wear blue jacket) 
  9. M’s mother; security footage

Michael slams that notebook closed, too, and then the remaining three, placing them in the lockable drawer where they belonged. He focuses his attention on the corkboard to the left of the desk. Michael had only been down here a few times when it was first renovated and this was new. “Alexander’s Vision Board” is affixed to the top in bubble letters. Clearly, an Isobel Evans’ original. It was sparsely decorated with an index that reads ‘Our dads used idiot code, you are not our dads’ that had been written by Kyle as a mock motivational poster and print out of a screencap from _ Wonder Showzen_. Michael smiles fondly when he reads it, thinking back to the nights when Alex would bring his laptop into the shed. He would grin impishly as he watched Michael watching the screen. He remembers this one. They asked the kids what love was. A little girl responded ‘a neurochemical con job.’ The last is slip of paper list tasks to be completed every day: information dissemination for grp, check schedule, walk dog x2, feed dog x2, stretch, wash hair. 

Michael had no idea it was truly this bad. 

This is a classic Manes/Guerin conundrum. Their timing is never quite right. When one is up, the other is down. Ships passing in the night. Michael is building his own ship now, literally and figuratively. Out of old and worn parts, sure. But, his own. He is making his own destiny. 

He climbs the ladder stairs that be built with his own two hands—and a little TK—back to the ground floor. The stairs were an addition they all insisted on and that Alex only agreed to when Liz pointed out that he couldn’t very well carry Fiona down a traditional ladder every day. That DIY project had made for an awkward (working around each other, sniping, Michael got splinters and Alex mother henned him) and awesome (he had received two blowjobs and gave Alex a hickey or three while jerking him off in the kitchen) weekend. 

He pats the canine on the head as he guides her back indoors and promises to return as he throws one too many Beggin Strips on the cabin’s hardwood. He grins as he pictures Alex’s resigned face and hears his monotone drawl of something akin to: You’re going to give my dog diabetes because you cannot understand portion control, Guerin.

* * *

On the drive through town, he starts to talk himself through all the worst case scenarios mentally. Fuck, he hates hospitals. Fuck, he hates humans. Instead of freaking out, he calls Isobel, willfully interrupting her work day. He asks how Alex was the last time she saw him. 

“He was, you know, himself.”

“Was he upset?”

“I mean, yeah. But, not anything out of the ordinary. We were tired. I fell asleep while we were watching _ Atonement. _ When I woke up during the scene in the cafe, he was crying. And mean, _ crying _. But, he does that. He is sensitive, you know? Why? Is something wrong with our good boy?”

“You gotta stop calling him that.”

“Why because you call him that in bed sometimes?”

It is difficult to embarrass Michael, but even he cannot help the mortified look he sends to the phone sliding around on his dash. “I cannot believe that he told you about that. It was _ one _time! Okay, maybe a handful of times over the course of a solid decade.”

A horrifyingly awkward beat passing before Isobel speaks again. “He never said anything to me.”

“Well, shit. I’m dead. Stick a fork in me.”

“If he didn’t kill you six months ago, I highly doubt he’ll do it now.”

“Yeah, what I did is so much worse than digging around in his head without permission,” he snipes. He was still mean and biting with her in a way he never has been. He had wondered the other day, whether or not he was acting out with Isobel because Max never would have allowed it. He is breaking all the rules whilst the king is gone. In an even sicker part of his rotten head, he hates that Isobel got to experience Alex’s mind in that way when he hasn’t. 

“Oh, he knows,” Isobel says like it is an afterthought. He hears her nails clacking against a keyboard. Michael sputters into the receiver. The typing sounds stop for a moment. She makes a soft noise. “I… told him. I told him the very next day.” Michael continues to sputter, practically swallowing his own tongue. “He was pissed. He was rightfully pissed and I felt guilty. Isn’t that weird?”

“Uh, not really.”

He turns into the hospital visitor lot as she explains. “Well, it is for me. I didn’t dig, by the way. I didn’t need to. One touch and I could see that he was helping us because it was the right thing to do, he thought he could acutally be of use and it is a nice big ole’ a ‘fuck you’ to the old man. And of course, you and Rosa and Liz. Oh, and a prime opportunity to flog himself. That’s an Alex Manes Deluxe Special if I’ve ever seen one. He asked me to promise to never do it again. I told him I couldn’t do that. I think he gets it. And his head?” She whistles. “The world has sure done a number on his fine ass. I mean—” 

“You never told me.”

Isobel tells him, primly, that is because it was their business and not his. 

“You really haven’t seen him in a week?” 

She sulks, voice dropping a register, “‘I’m working on my project, Isobel. My life doesn’t start and stop at your convenience, _ Isobel _.’”

“He doesn’t sound that bitchy.”

“He does. He is the most miserable type A bitch on this planet. And probably ours.”

“Takes a bitch to know a bitch,” he sing-songs, putting his truck in park and throwing his keys on the dash. 

“And you ain’t foolin’.”

“He was doing well. For a good while there,” Michael confesses. “And then something changed.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“No, I don’t. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Right.”

“Not because—”

“Iz, I get it. Believe me, I fuckin' get it.”

“Michael, have a bitch call a bitch. Please.”

* * *

The well-meaning and pretty nurse at the station tells him that Captain Manes may be asleep. She points him the direction of his room. He starts to ask if he has a roommate, as he is internally panicking at the prospect. She cuts him off, telling him that every room on this floor is single occupancy. He thanks her softly. Her smile is tight and dismissive, but polite. He grips the backpack straps like a lifeline. The CNAs in the hall are looking at him, communicating with each other across the pathway. A raised eyebrow here, a knowing frown and subtle shift in front of the med cart there. Michael reckons it is due to the fact that he is shaking like a leaf, like he is looking for a fix. He tries to muster a flirty, disarming smile, but he is putting all his energy into not running screaming back to his truck. He manages a wobbly wave. It is isn’t reciprocated. 

Kyle Valenti in track pants and a tight Michigan Wolverines shirt, slumped over and loudly snoring in chair is absolutely the last thing Michael thought he would see when he walked into Alex’s hospital room. But there he is, a pile of glamour muscles and drool. Alex is lying on the bed, sleeping deeply. An IV is steadily pumping fluids into his tired body. Alex has thinned out considerably since his return to New Mexico almost two years ago. Getting more slight by the month of late. Michael stands awkwardly in the middle of the small room. He gets lost in trying to memorize the features of Alex’s face: the full mouth, perfect nose, slight stubble, the way his ever-contorted brow is relaxed. His hair looks clean and mussed, fanned out along his forehead and the white sheets. Michael’s heart rate settling down at the knowledge that Liz was speaking the truth. Alex is whole and fine and resting. He is so glad he stopped to shower. Ain’t that women, though? Just making sense. 

Alex is sleeping flat on his back. He usually sleeps curled in on himself. Like a baby. It is only after a few beats that Michael takes in the fabric, makeshift restraint around each wrist. 

All Michael can hear is the blood rushing through him as hastily slides the heavy rucksack off his shoulders and uses his mind to slam it into Valenti’s rising and falling belly hard enough to rouse him. “You fuckin’ traitorous motherfucker,” he roars, spit flying from his mouth. 

It takes Valenti a moment to shake off the hit before he barks for Michael to knock it off with such quiet force that it stops him in his tracks. Michael was barreling towards him with his hands up ready to curl tightly around the doctor’s throat. Valenti placatingly holds his hands up before cupping them together, as if he were begging. The doctor doesn’t have his shoes on and he has a bit of dried drool on his cheek. The visual is so ludicrous that Michael nearly laughs. 

Valenti wipes at his face. He runs his fingers through his hair a few times before walking passed Michael to close the door. He heaves back down in the chair. “Listen, he was having a severe flashback or nightmare. He was combative, essentially delirious, for almost twenty minutes. We had to sedate him. I had no choice. He was starting to really hurt himself.” 

Michael drops his hands to his side, opening his mouth as if to speak. He snaps it shut and begins pacing from the edge of the bed to the door and back again, exhaling through his nose like a bull. His eyes darting from the closed, ugly hospital blinds to the doctor to the sleeping form in the bed to the wall. He is still counting to a hundred when Valenti’s droning voice breaks his concentration. Valenti gestures to the straps adhered to Alex’s wrists. “I was planning on taking them off myself, but I fell asleep. We were up most of the night. The attending ordered a—it really just—this all was tougher than we anticipated.” He grimaces and rubs at his middle. Michael hears him mumbling ‘jackass’ under his breath, but let’s it go. 

“Hope you had a very relaxing nap,” Michael mocks, voice nasty and awash with contempt. He moves to free Alex’s wrists. He takes in the bruises that are beginning to form and how the blue hospital gown contrasts with Alex’s perfect skin. He feels it. His work with Katherine today has left him feeling splayed open, the elation he felt is long gone. As if it had been sucked from his body in one fell swoop. He is the walking wounded. He schools his face, and finishes counting to a hundred like he was taught. To his surprise, he calms enough to look away from Alex’s wrists and choke out, “Thanks for having Liz call me.” 

He runs his fingers runs along the outline of Alex’s delicate ulna, skittering next to the ID band and the obnoxious red wristlet that reads ‘FALL RISK.’ Michael lifts his gaze to the doctor and repeats himself. 

Valenti is looking up from his phone, blinking at him blankly. He glances pointedly at Alex and then pitches his voice much lower than Michael’s, as if to scold him by example, “I didn’t tell her to call you.”

“But, Liz said—”

“Liz,” Valenti bites out her name like it offends him, “thought she was doing the right thing. I’m sure. Anyway, they have him essentially sedated now. He really wore himself out. He’s resting. You can go home.” 

He yearns to set his jaw and assert himself, but this is Valenti’s kingdom. The prince could snap his fingers and sentence him to exile or order off with his curly, big head. He exhales deeply again and steps away from the bed. He takes the items from the backpack, placing them with care on the tray table. “I brought him some clean clothes. This is, uh, his weighted blanket.” Michael folds it over the remaining empty seat. He hates this, feeling like he has to bare his belly in submission to stay close. It is against his very nature, but he will play the game if he must. Valenti is still staring at him. “He sleeps better with it.”

Valenti blinks and makes a strained face. “He is heavily medicated.” The ‘dumbass’ is implied. “Goodbye, Guerin,” Valenti says slowly. When it becomes clear that Michael isn’t making any move to leave. Kyle rolls his eyes and scoffs in that infuriating way of his. “As I am sure Liz told you, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t slept in three days. Possibly more. He’s gonna be in and out of it until tomorrow morning. He just needs fluids and to catch up on sleep. We have him. We have a plan. You can go.” 

Michael tries not to blanch at the implication of a plan that he is not privy to. Were Michael a better being, he would dig a little deeper to harness his—what he is coming to recognize as learned—cruelty and territorial bullshit in the face of Valenti’s increasingly apparent panic. 

“Please just go,” the doctor pleads. 

After the day (week, month, year, life) he has had, the sneer that forms on Michael’s face as he sits in the uncomfortable hospital chair was inevitable. “Bad news, doc. I have ways of getting in touch with him on my own, you know? 21st century and all that.” Valenti frowns deeply when he adds, “And Alex always answers when I call. Sorry about that.” 

Valenti shifts in his own seat, hand reaching to his back pocket. He waves the retrieved cell phone in Michael’s direction. With the movement, the screen illuminates, showing the time (13:38) and a photo of Michael crouching on the sidewalk, holding Fiona. It was the first time he had met the rescue dog. Michael came upon them on the street, just outside the place where Isobel gets her nails done. Alex was seated on the bench, rubbing at his hip and speaking lowly to the canine, telling her what a good girl she was. The pair of them determined pretty quickly that this had been planned by the blonde, who was not coming. “You know I really love about your sister?” Alex had said, eyes crinkling at the corners, “Her subtlety. No one has a more delicate touch.” 

They got to pretend for a few glorious moments on that hidden side street. They were minutes into recounting their past few days to one another before Michael realized that he was no longer petting Fiona. But rather squatting directly in front of Alex, running his hands firmly up and down the man’s jean clad thighs. When Alex leaned into brush his mouth against his, Michael moved to stand. He was trying to make things work with Maria then. He feigned feeling guilty. In that moment, Michael was quickly realizing that this desperate version of himself, that was held together with acetone, whiskey, and sorrow could be a real asshole. Alex shook off the rebuffing with grace and with a small grin instructed him to smile. “For Isobel,” Alex said, as Michael smirked at him through the viewfinder. “For posterity.”

There’s a text notification from Isobel, cutting off half his forehead in the photo: _hi bb. michael just called me looking for you. he is headed your way, i guess? he seems okay :) hope everything is okay with you. hang out soon pleeeeease??_

He feels warmth and following sadness knowing Alex had chosen to walk around with this in pocket, at his fingertips. It makes him yearn—for what surely must be the millionth time since he turned eighteen—to gather the Alex into his arms like a babe, take him to his truck, fill the tank, hit the road, and never look back. Michael has spent so many years lost in fantasy, waiting for a savior or a sign to come to him. He has to make his own luck, knows that now, deep in his marrow. A ship he builds with his own bare hands is sure to sail smooth. Here, in a sterile smelling room, sitting across from a man he has loathed for nearly fifteen years, he has to fight for their corner. Has to protect his lovely rose, his captain, his Persephone, his knight. 

“Wow, letting your buddies tie him down and cutting off his ability to communicate with the outside world. You really are a byproduct of a pair of pigs, huh?”

Michael can see it, the moment Valenti decides he is ready to go. Michael reveals it in, blood pumping hot under the skin. He foolishly hopes Kyle goes for the first punch. Michael loves the fight, still. He’s good at it. Yearns for it. The crunch of bone on bone, the sweet split of skin. The flood of adrenaline to the brain and gut, the rabbit-fast heartbeat. As cliche as it is, it makes him feel so fucking alive. He squares up, ready to launch himself from the chair, knees bouncing as he shifts in his seat. He feels his lips curling despite himself. He nearly lets out a yip. 

Valenti sags back further into his seat, relenting as soon as he begins. He looks as if he is going to cry, dark circles under his eyes. “Okay, you know what? I was there. I was fuckin’ there! I was the one who found him like this. Not you, not Liz, not Maria, not anybody else. Me! I am supposed to be rock with this shit, but you didn’t see him yesterday morning. You didn’t hear him. I did!” 

Valenti’s near yawping causes Alex to stir, a shuffle of cheap cloth, tan skin, and dark hair under a light blanket. The arguing pair pause to hold their breath and watch as the other man tosses and turns and groans. Alex settles for a few moments before his eyes snap open and he grumbles into the pillow, “Do you ever, _ ever _ just shut up, Kyle?” He sounds so quiet, all sleepsick and downy. It reminds him of how soft and lovely Alex was after Michael had finally coaxed him back onto his lap a month ago. It feels like it happened centuries before, yet there is a phantom heat in his palms, as if his hands were still bracketing the man’s hips. This distraction of the memory of mortal flesh allows Valenti’s medical instincts outrank Michael’s protectiveness. Valenti is at Alex’s side in a nanosecond, reaching for the call bell. “If you hit that bell, I’m gonna… well, I’m gonna do something to yah. Something not nice.” Alex pitches his voice deep and demanding, slurring with fatigue, “It involves my foot and your ass.” 

Kyle chuckles, backing away from the call bell, both hands raised in a mock surrender. He makes pleasant small talk while he checks Alex’s vitals. The sight of another man’s hands on the delicate skin of Alex’s wrists makes Michael’s teeth itch. He remembers Alex’s scoff, during one of the many disagreements they had over the past year. Alex’s bored assertion that he had been ‘an actual fighter pilot at 21’ and could handle ‘a goddamn flesh wound, Guerin’ rings in his mind. It doesn’t seem to stop Michael’s hindbrain from wanting to throw his body in between the two of them. Kyle finishes up, seemingly pleased that Alex is stable. 

Valenti pats Alex’s head mockingly as the airman grumbles out, “Your ass is grass, kid.”

“And I’m the goddamn lawn mower,” Valenti responds, voice equal gravelly. 

“And fuck the panhandle shits,” Alex garbles out.

“Peanut butter and jealous,” Valenti finishes, voice higher than Michael had ever heard it. Alex laughs faintly. These are jokes that Michael doesn’t pretend to understand. Based off of Valenti’s smile, which is genuine and patient, he guesses they bring up nice memories. Maybe of a grandfather or neighbors or sitcom characters. “So, you remember where you are?” 

Holding up his unbound wrists and frowning, Alex deadpans, “I remember everything, you turd.” Michael snorts from his seat, causing Alex to finally take notice of him. They stare at each other for a few moments. Michael sucks in a grin when Alex look up at Valenti and whispers, as much worshipful as he is conspiratorial, “That’s Michael.”

“It is, indeed. Manes, my man, you are high as a kite.”

“I am high. Why am I?”

“You remember everything, huh? You had a hell of a nightmare. They had to sedate you and you are on—as we say in the business—hella pain meds for your leg because you had your prosthetic on for way too long. Someone was shirking his wear schedule. So, if someone in this room is a turd.” Valenti clears his throat while looking at the IV drip. He speaks so quietly that Michael has to strain to hear him, “You really scared me for a minute there, buddy.” 

“I do remember that part.” Alex visibly swallows a few times. He touches Kyle’s forearm lightly before murmuring, “I’m sorry, that just happens sometimes.” The drugs seem to be making his body all loose and floppy as he drops his head to the side to face Michael. His big brown eyes are wet, now free hands seeking Michael’s own. “I was just really focused on what I was doing. I’m going to do much better next time. I’m so close to finding—I just got really into what I was doing. I lost track of time. I’m sorry.”

Like a moth to a flame, Michael gathers Alex’s hands towards his own chest, leaning half his body over the bed to complete the cradle. “They tell me you ‘lost track’ of time for almost four days. What did yah go and do that for, Private Idiot?” 

“Couldn’t sleep, just earning my keep.” Alex’s mouth twitches, phantom of a smile and white teeth showing. He eyes slip into panic. “My dog. How long was I out?” 

“She’s fine. I went and fed her before I got here. You’ve only been here for about a day.”

Alex looks unconvinced and turns to Valenti for confirmation. Michael pulls his chair as close to Alex’s bedside as he can and shakes the Listerine to grab his attention. The man has always been obsessive about his teeth. Michael once caught him checking his molars in the mirror with a flashlight. Alex eyes the green-blue liquid and makes adorable grabby hands. He tells Michael that he is an utter angel and ungainly unscrews the lid. Valenti winces as he watches Alex swish and swallow. 

Valenti sits back into his chair, legs spread wide, and asks, “What’s your pain level, dude?”

“Right now? Zero. You guys have got me on some great shit,” he slurs. Michael watches him shimmy down under the thin bed sheet, puppy-like. “It feels like my spine has been dipped in honey. My spine is all melted.” He looks at Michael and gives him a small, private smile. “You’re my favorite Martian, you know? You’re my favorite thing. I wanna teach you how to swim. I had a dream about it once. I dream about you a lot. Mostly good things now. One time you built me a whole house. One time you had a pet tiger. He was red.”

Michael shifts closer, presses his lips to Alex’s slightly sweaty forehead. They beam at each other lazily. He hears Valenti shifting in the chair and pinging of some micro-pay game the doctor is playing his phone. Michael grunts out, annoyed at his mere presence. “You can dip out now, Valenti.”

“Guerin, don’t,” Alex warns. Michael slumps back a little, frustrated. When Alex makes a noise of discomfort at the pull on his IV, Michael shoots back up straight. He apologizes. Alex just pats his cheek and whispers, “S’okay.”

They sit in silence for a long while. Alex sobers and tries to untangle his fingers from Michael’s, who just grips even tighter. 

“I’ve been here too long already,” he reasons wrenching his cool hand away. His eyes look authoritative, but his voice still slurs a bit. He is looking from Michael to Valenti with increasing speed. “You brought me here before I could follow protocol.” The finger he is pointing at Valenti shakes with drowsiness. “I left a program running. I left my notes out. Is the bunker locked down? What day is it? My shift is tonight.” He rolls eyes up towards the ceiling, Michael can practically see him working out hours in his head. “I have to drive Liz to Duke City this weekend to get into their archives. Where’s my phone? Maybe the archivist emailed me back already. And my poor _ dog _.”

He makes a move to sit up and Michael pushes him back onto the bed. Valenti adds from his chair, unaffected, “We can help with that. You don’t have to do everything alone.”

“Some of us work better alone,” Alex yawns and his jaw cracks. “I think that some of us are meant to be alone.” 

“Don’t let Isobel hear you talking like that. She’ll make you get matching friendship tattoos," Valenti teases.

“I’m like a new toy. Shiny and new. A cool project. Look good in pictures. She’ll get bored of me, eventually.”

Were it not for the drugs and Alex’s general loopiness, Michael may have accused him of being petty. But, he can acknowledge that he hasn’t completely misread Iz. She does love a project. 

He also knows Alex to believe this to be his higher truth. If Alex had a speck of self-worth, he would see how deeply she cares for him. When you think you are nobody, how could someone like Isobel really care? Alex truly believes he is no one and that is what he deserves. He is nobody, wanted by nobody. Michael knows it because it was his own truth, as well. But, if Alex can be wrong about himself, maybe Michael is, too. 

He knows that he played a part in it. For both of them. He wants a drink. 

“I love her, you know? I do. I love her whole face. I love her whole face and I was relieved when Kyle told me my dad was dead. That day, in the bathroom, you remember?”

Michael remembers that he was ten days sober, hurting all over. He remembers showing up at the cabin and picking a fight, as per. Alex nodded as he yelled. Fiona hid under the bed. He remembers being in the tub and Alex’s nimble fingers working the soap into the roots of his hair and being caked in mud from the sternum down. He doesn’t remember how or why. He can recall with ease Alex’s humming, the dog’s swampy exhales, and Valenti bursting through the front door, shouting Alex’s name. Fiona barked and growled as she took for the door. He remembers how Alex ushered the dog back into the bathroom and told them both to stay put and closed the door. He remembers hearing Alex ordering Valenti to get out and then Valenti’s panicked voice. How it contrasted with Alex’s calm timbre. He told Valenti that he would call his brothers and tell them himself, but that he needed to leave because Alex was in the middle of something. Valenti snapped, “His truck is out front, Alex. You think I’m fucking stupid? Do you both think we are all fucking blind and stupid?” The door slammed and Alex came back into the bathroom without a word and thoroughly rinsed Michael’s hair. Michael kept his eyes closed through the whole scene, head pounding.

“My own father was dead and you know what? I felt no sadness, no regret. No nothing. In the moment, his death soothed me. I’m no better than he is, I’m not. Mimi said it was in my aura. You said—” 

“I wanted to be the one who did it. I wanted him to die screaming for what he did to us. For what he did to you. He took you from me before I even knew you. He stole us. He stole it.” Michael had so many fantasies about killing Jesse Manes. How and where he would do it, what he would say as he watched the man fight to live. He wanted to make him beg. He wanted to do it for himself, for Alex. He wanted so much. He had failed to accomplish that, too. Like so many things. He just wanted to protect him. He knows this isn’t the time. He knows this shouldn't be about him. But with ‘it’s abusive’ ringing like an alarm in his skull, the words spill out anyway, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about making you feel alone. I was wrong for my part in it, too, you know?” Alex squeezes his eyes shut and fervently shakes his head. “But, I was. I was so wrong, baby. I don’t even know why you put up with me because I’m such a fuck-up.”

Michael slams a fist into his thigh, hoping it will bruise. He didn’t realize he was crying until Alex cups his cheeks, mirroring his mussitation. He then whines, “No, no. Oh, it’s okay, beloved. You’re the best part of this whole thing. The most loving, so strong. My Orpheus, remember?” He pats the side of Michael’s face softly, says he knows his heart. “So, it’s really okay. S'okay.” 

“Don’t you start cryin’, too.”

“Sorry,” Alex says. Michael scoffs and tells him to stop. Alex wipes at his own eyes. His voice sounds pulled tight when he stresses, “People hurt you and I don’t understand why anyone would ever want to. I love you and I feel like I let it happen and it just makes me cry sometimes. It’s okay.” 

He can hear Katherine’s tender and firm voice is in his head, clear as a bell: be gentle, but say what you mean. Speak the truth: That shit ain’t your fault. You tried to give me a home. We were just kids and I loved you. I loved you so much and so fully that I was certain you had bewitched me. A bonny compass to get lost with. I love you. I can rejoice in you now, isn’t that wonderful? 

But, he can’t. He can’t swallow his fear down. He thought he could fight it in here, with Valenti so close, with his love so vulnerable. And yet, he feels like an open sore. His body and mind ache.

“You’re so right,” Michael manages to get out. “It is okay. We’re all okay. You just gotta get some sleep and then we’ll get you outta here. I’ll take you home and you can keep resting there.” 

Michael chases the hand that still caresses his face with his lips. With the press of his nose against his palm, Michael smells the antiseptic and hand soap that mars Alex’s skin. He hates it. The touch seems to calm him, though. Michael mirrors his growing dopey grin. He reckons that he has word vomited enough, and perhaps saying, ‘I just want to sit with you and kiss the back of your neck a little’ or quoting Walt Whitman is a bit much for mixed company. He settles for: “We can watch _ Buffy. _ Or that thing on Netflix about the dude pushing his wife down the stairs. The whole thing. I hear it’s a real trip.”

That pulls a deep laugh from Alex’s chest. “You’re sick.” He bites his pad of Michael’s thumb, the gesture so minute, any other being in the universe would have missed it. Michael’s prick twitches in his jeans. Alex takes pity on him. “Alright. How’s Max? Any change?” Michael shakes his head. He vaguely hears Valenti’s voice cutting through, asking if Alex remembered the talk they had last night. Alex grunts a half-hearted _ uh-huh _ as he continues to run a finger up and down the bridge of Michael’s nose. “I haven’t seen you since I was a dick in the cave.”

“You weren’t a dick.”

“I was. How are you? Are you sleeping well?”

“Isn’t that my line?”

“So, no. Me neither.” Alex frowns, the drugs making him more lax and expressive. Alex’s pout deepens, and Michael knows if he told him how cute he is, Alex would swipe at him. He keeps it to himself for now. Alex glares knowingly. “How is the workbook going, Guerin? Did you give any thought to the paperwork I gave you?” 

Michael cringes because he has nowhere to hide. Alex is intuitive and can be fucking lethal when we wants to be. He knows Michael has really been shirking that part of his work. He has yet to make it past page seven. How does Alex fucking know that? He wipes at the drying tear tracks under his eyes and then does the same for Alex. An all too familiar action for them. A truth that should make Michael ache, but he just feels warm with the ease of it. “Hey, now. What happened to you being high and talking about melting bones and laughing about uxoricide and this being fun?”

“Sobering up by the second. Guerin, you have to take care of yourself.” 

“Pot, kettle, darlin’,” he whispers, pressing a lingering kiss to each palm. “I do what I can, given the circumstances.”

“You're doing good. I’m sorry.”

“It’s whatever.”

Alex looks at him the same way he has for over ten years: head tilted, long-suffering, jaw clenched and highlighting his cheekbones, frustrated, eyebrows furrowed, and fond. Michael thinks that they should really look into patenting it, so that he could carry that image around in his pocket. Fair is only fair. Alex sighs, relenting. “Fine. Then tell me something good. Tell me about what you are working on.”

Michael murmurs lowly about his latest project, rubbing his fingers along Alex’s forearm in a pattern that he knows will make the fatigued man drift off. He sucks in a smile for the umpteenth time, watching as Alex tries to keep his eyes open. He is nodding along with Michael’s intentionally overly clinical description of Liz’s discovery of gene replication and that he thinks biocompatibility is going to be an issue. “Do you think that sounds doable? I don’t. Liz is nuts, right?” 

Alex hums in agreement, nodding his head one more time, and closes his eyes. He seems to fall back asleep for a few moments, before rousing again. When he opens his eyes, he looks at Michael like he can’t believe he is actually there. He is drinking Michael in, as if he dreamed him. “You can’t be here. You can’t. It’s not good for you. You have to go.” 

It is if his mind isn’t connected to his body. In the same moment he is begging Michael to leave, he is placing his hands along the other man’s cheeks, running them down his neck to rub at his shoulders. He pulls him by his lapels towards the bed. Alex asks if he is okay and Michael lets out a decidedly pleased sigh. He can’t shuck his jacket, belt, and boots off fast enough. He crawls into the hospital bed with his human, ignoring the consistent beeping of the monitor and Valenti’s cross words about the wires and how all this may not be the best idea. It’s a tight fit, two grown men in a hospital bed. They’ve made it work in much worse. 

Alex unconsciously grasps Michael’s left hand, massaging it as he doses. He starts speaking softly, nose pressed to Michael’s sternum that he is sorry for all the times he yelled and that he is tired. Michael pulls the other man up higher, shoving his face into the curve of Alex’s neck, breathing in the tang of his dried sweat and the hospital jell-o. Alex is insistent that there is something he has to tell him. Michael shushes him. Tells Alex that he is tired, too, and that they can talk again when they wake up. When he asks if Alex wants his blanket from home, he shakes his head and burrows his face into Michael’s armpit. He asks if Michael wants it. Michael chokes down a “_I just want to keep what is left of my family safe. I just want the universe to be nice to us.”_ Instead, he adjusts their positions so Alex’s leg is propped appropriately and takes extra care to ensure that the hospital blanket is covering Alex’s partially bare back. Michael can’t summon energy to do anything more than murmur reassuring nonsense into his ear. It bowls the man over in that moment, the knowledge that loving Alex is the easiest thing in his life. It’s all the other shit, the noise that makes the ship crash. If they had been left to pilot it alone, they’d be universes away by now. Humanity and its ugliness did this to them. He hates them for it. He burns with it. 

Alex tells Valenti that it will be fine through a yawn, settling his head on Michael’s shoulder as his eyes flutter closed. Alex tucks his hands under Michael’s shirt. He scritches at the hair decorating Michael’s belly and sings softly. He looks at Alex’s rising and falling chest, how his long lashes splay out on his cheek.

Michael flips Valenti the double bird. 

Valenti snatches his leather jacket and wallet off the window sill. As he heads out of the door, Michael hears the doctor mutter a heartfelt, “For fuck’s sake.”


	3. free your own heart

Kyle has killed a man, in a way. Kyle had a hand in killing a Master Sergeant. Kyle, in the only way that matters, killed a man and today he feels about as useful as a screen door in a submarine. He is a doctor and he is being stonewalled by a sniveling, wannabe cowboy. 

He just cut Nurse Stephanie off mid-sentence. He snapped at her that 3705 was awake and cogent. “He has a visitor who is welcome. I’m gonna be right back, okay?” 

One of the first things Kyle learned as a resident was to not run unless it is an absolute emergency. It makes people uneasy and the last thing sick people need is to panic during a crisis. Kyle took off sprinting as soon as his pit-stop at the nurse’s station was complete. The second was to not fuck with the nurses. He hopes his reputation of not typically being a dick is enough to carry the day. 

He foregoes the elevator to climb the stairs in an attempt to distract himself from the memory of this morning. Being jolted awake by Alex’s bloodcurdling scream, after only a few hours of sleep. How his friend poured sweat, the night terror ripping through him. When Kyle held his friend’s wrists down, he whimpered in sympathy and spilled out apologies. He was so sorry, but he had to let them do this. He was so sorry. Alex stilled for a just a moment and looked Kyle in the eye and swallowed down another scream. He choked out quietly, almost blandly, “I have blood on my hands. Every day of my life. The blood in me is bad. Every day there is blood on my hands. There’s blood. Doves get entangled in a snare. Hanged maids. The most pitiable end. I’m not you. I’m not like you. Can’t you understand? There is—it is a plague. A plague on my house. A plague on all of our houses. I have the wrong blood. Iniquitous, iniquitous blood. It’s in the fucking wires and walls. It is bad. My blood is bad. I have commitments.” 

His mind rattles with the memory of the off-putting hiccup of Alex's frantic breathing. He staggers into Dr. Rebecca Ramirez’s office in the east wing of the fifth floor. He is, not for the first time, struck by her beauty. He has spent many an intake meeting admiring the swell of her hips, the softness of her jawline and arms, her belly, how her voice is a little raspy towards the end of the day, and her convex, just perfect ass. He is suddenly and keenly aware that he hasn’t brushed his teeth for nearly two days. With regret for not grabbing Alex’s mouthwash and his cheeks a little pink from more than just physical exertion, he steps into her office. “Becca, I need a copy of the Manes psych eval. Don’t make this a whole thing. Just give me it.”

She looks up at him from her seat with yellow circles set in under her light brown eyes. Her hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail. She huffs and returns to her work. “Well, ‘hola’ to you, too.”

“Hola,” he smiles through his exhaustion. “The eval, please.”

She huffs again, more dramatically this time. She pushes back from her desk, crosses her ankles and arms. “Why?”

“The boyfriend’s back.” 

“A-ya, a-ya, his boyfr—okay, I can tell by the thing you are doing with your face that I have misread this and we are not doing a bit. Is he causing trouble? Do I need to call security?”

“No, no. He’s in bed with him.”

A bright smile splits across Becca’s face, charmingly crooked bottom teeth on display. She rolls from him on her desk chair and bends to pull Solomon’s _ The Noonday Demon _ on the shelf. Kyle focuses on the condensation forming on her water bottle on the desk to avoid his eyes lingering on where her shirt is riding up for too long. She says, still bent over, “I just put in my report that I think that getting accustomed to physical touch is gonna be a crucial part of his recovery, you know? Is he responding well or is he resisting?” She pops back up and gestures to the horrid plastic hospital chairs. “Do you want to sit?”

His traps twitch at the mere thought of slumping back into those torture devices. “No. No time. He, uh, he seems to really like it. From him, obviously.” 

“That is so, so great,” Kyle watches as she methodically types and turns again to open a filing cabinet drawer, removing brochures like _ When Someone You Love Has a Mental Illness _ and _ Cognitive Behavior Therapy Facts and Figures: What You Need to Know _. “Are you heading back to see him or going home for the day?”

“Oh, I am for fuckin’ sure going back.”

“Awesome,” she declares with mock enthusiasm, clapping her hands together once for emphasis. “I have to get out of here myself, but I promise I will be here in the morning for when he transfers. Will you give these to Boyfriend? I can talk him through them tomorrow. Will he be here, you think? Let me just get you my card for Boyfriend just in case.” 

She takes back to her desk drawer, which is a glorified pile. She digs through pens and paper clips, cursing under her breath. Kyle stares at the book’s red cover, the colorful leaflets she placed just after the title page and the way they stick out unevenly. He interjects, “Not his boyfriend. At least, I don't think so. And Not-Boyfriend is going to try and take him home tonight. I just know it.” 

“Okay, Again, what exactly do you need a copy of the eval for? Because, this isn’t a game. I am not a fan of the idea of you waving around my patient’s records just because you can.”

Kyle is hurt and offended. He speaks through the lump forming in his throat, “I’m not—I would never—This guy's an engineer, a scientist. He understands moving parts and he despises me. I figure that he will take it better on paper.”

“I could talk to him, instead. I’d be happy to do it. I prefer it.”

Kyle dodges with the understatement of the century: “He doesn’t like doctors.” 

“Maybe I could be swayed to Probably Boyfriend’s side here. If he is going to have to support at home, we could set up some robust out patient. Maybe get Boyfriend himself involved? I’m not gonna lie to you, Dr. Valenti. Your friend would be a tough call for a seasoned doctor, let alone me.”

They are both still wet behind the ears. He can feel Becca's reluctance before it even registers on her own face. So, he tries an old trick that he learned from every attending he had ever encountered: "Becca, what are your instincts telling you?"

She has to strain to not roll her eyes. This is a tactic that he knows full well she is familiar with, too. She sighs again, eyelids drooping a bit. As she seeks to rub the exhaustion and stress from her eyes, she answers, "That what we did last night was right. That it was the best we could do. That if he goes home right now, I won’t be able to get him back here again on his own. So, imma print you a copy of this eval.”

“Thank you,” he says, barely loud enough to be heard over the hall xerox spitting out pages. 

She pulls the top sheet, a release form, and signs it. Shaking her head, she says, “I’m trusting you with this because you’re a good doctor and you’re a good man. I have to believe you have the best of intentions.” 

“And because I have legal rights to it. I’m his med proxy.”

“Are you? You’ve only mentioned that two or so dozen times in the past thirty-six hours,” she teases, holding the printed evaluation just behind her back. Making him have to crowd into her space to get it. She says into the shell of his ear, “Maybe you should ask me out sometime?” 

“Really?” he asks, standing straight, printer-hot pages in hand. 

She slowly raises her eyebrows and sits back in front of her computer screen. Her accompanying smirk draws attention to her slightly smudged lipstick. Kyle is surprised to take in that the imperfection means nothing to him. He places a hand over hers, to get her eyes back on him. He thinks he could live with her eyes on him forever. She smiles at him warmly, and yes, he take forever on very happily. “Do you like Thai food? Alex told me about this new noodle place on Second.”

She gently removes his hand from atop hers, giving his wrist a reassuring squeeze for good measure. “Get outta here. Go be Captain Save-A-Ho. Let me know if you need back up.”

He is able to chase down the bubbling rebuttal in favor of declaring that the conversation was to be continued. He breaks back into a full run at the shake of Becca’s head and a dismissive wave of her hand. 

* * *

Kyle lifts his eyes towards the ceiling, thanking God that they are not fucking. Walking in on patients during an intimate moment is always awkward. Sometimes people are wary of doctors or outsiders and will throw him out. He has had cups of piss thrown at his back more than once. He has walked in on patients screaming at their sisters, on children reconciling with fathers, friends and cousins wailing with laughter during a card game, quiet moments with beloved uncles. And twice, he has walked in on his patients having sex. Kyle now knows for certain that it is tenfold awkward when you are actually friends with the people. 

Or person, rather. 

Guerin ain’t his friend and never will be. 

He was really, really afraid that he would walk in on them fucking or something. The one time was more than enough. 

Kyle’s head already feels a little clearer, taking in the knowledge that Alex is sleeping soundly. Alex is letting out little exhales, curled on top of Guerin. He seems to be half-asleep himself, grumbling out in a low timbre, “For that matter, Odysseus himself might have borrowed a trick or two from the rabbit hero, for he is very old and was never at a loss for a trick to deceive his enemies.”

Guerin gives him a quick, furtive glance before returning to his ministrations. The mechanic murmurs about rabbits and a sun god for a few pages before clearing his throat and placing the paperback face down on Alex’s back, closing his own eyes. 

Kyle whispers, feeling all too much a little boy trying to sneak around during a sleepover and less like a literal MD with every passing second. “Can we talk?” Guerin grunts, thumbing the book cover with one hand, running his knuckles along Alex’s cheekbone with the other. “This isn’t a request. Come on, man. I know you don’t like hospitals, but he is okay here. I trust these women.” That only serves to have Guerin tighten his hold, Kyle doesn’t think that he has even realized he had done it. Kyle is impatient by nature and snaps, “Don’t make me be the asshole. Look, you know if he does not wake up to an ice cold Cherry Coke Zero he is gonna be the prissiest _ bitch_. We need to talk and he needs to sleep.”

Guerin is looking at Alex with a besotted expression. He watches the man card his healed hand through Alex’s hair. “Cherry Coke Zero, huh? You got me there. Let’s go.” 

Liz once bribed Alex with Cherry Cokes to pick them up from a party in San Patricio. With them both drunk and Maria and Rosa party hopping, they needed a ride. Alex was straight edge well into junior year, so a guaranteed DD. He picked them up bare-faced, piercings out, and playing one of their favorite songs from childhood. Liz, buzzed and warmhearted, sang about a mad season getting you down and swayed in a free away. She pressed insistent kisses to his cheek and then Alex’s and then back to him again when they pulled into the Crashdown’s side lot. They both watched her climb the backstairs and as she stumbled through her bedroom window. Only when the window slammed shut did Alex shift the car out of park. The fifteen minute drive from Liz’s place to the suburbs had felt never-ending. Kyle fidgeted in the silence until Alex tuned the radio to the highway advisory. The same way Kyle’s own dad did whenever they went on a long trip. Dad always said it was relaxing. Alex dropped him off a few houses down so Kyle’s parents wouldn’t be suspicious. Before Kyle could thank him, Alex lent across his lap to push the passenger side door open himself. He looked straight out through the windshield as Kyle wrestled out of his seat belt. He waited as Kyle choked out his thanks and then Alex drove away without a glance his way. Kyle murmured to himself about the interstate traffic eastbound until his head hit the pillow. He still cannot say with certainty, all these years later, whether it Alex did it to console or guilt him. Knowing the Manes boy, it was most likely both. He left a liter in Alex’s locker the next day all the same.

Guerin closes the book, perching it on the tray table with care. Kyle has to count to ten to keep from rolling his eyes and snapping told-you-sos. He watches Guerin struggle to disentangle himself from the other man and the IV. Alex lets out a frustrated, sleepy whine. He kicks out his one slipper sock covered foot when Guerin moves his head from his chest and rests it back on the mattress. “Michael, Michael,” Alex keens out, all lachrymose. He blindly reaches his hands out to the now standing man. He can’t believe this version of Alex exists. An Alex without a set mouth, sardonic wit, and laser-focused intent. 

But, obviously, Guerin is used to this. Kyle can make out “back” and “please” and “sleep” and a saccharine, soft “my darlin’.” Guerin presses kisses to Alex’s forehead, cheeks, nose, and mouth. Guerin is cooing. There’s no other word for it. It jars Kyle again. He assumed that Alex would recoil from it. This Alex clearly doesn’t know Kyle is here and it makes the doctor feel like the seediest kind of voyeur. This Alex nuzzles into his treatment. This Alex is grinning sleepily up at Guerin, chasing the other man’s mouth with his own. 

This Alex simpers and That Guerin groans, dirty and low. It is an unexpected scene that four months ago would have made Kyle's body flood with relief. Now, Kyle wishes he were any other place in the whole world. 

He turns around for the sake of feigning privacy and checks his watch. It is so different from how he had watched Alex care for Guerin throughout the whole debacle the past year. The same man that swiftly moved Maria out of the way, and took a drunk, shaken, sour-smelling Guerin by the shoulders. He pressed their foreheads together and told Guerin to calm his fucking mind and then the asshole actually did. When Alex heard that Guerin was trying to stop drinking, he threw out all the alcohol in the communal places. He was the first to show teeth when Kyle brought a six pack to a meeting. Watched countless times over the past six months as Alex hid Guerin from view, clinically and calmly scrubbed blood from Guerin’s fingernails and dirt from his face. He was a mender, by nature. A fixed point that seeks to harness Guerin’s energy and send him the least destructive direction. Straight-armed, firm, but gentle. Willing to do what is necessary for the man, if it means Guerin hates him or not. 

Guerin did seem to hate him for a spell, there. Would sneer about their stand-in fearless leader. 

Hated and placed blame on Kyle’s oldest friend, who after spending all day running his prosthetic, experienced what he thought was the greatest heartbreak he would ever know, and witnessed a mass murder at Caulfield, had jerked back from Kyle’s instinctual touch to his shoulder. His dearest, only true friend who waves off any overture of what he perceives as unnecessary, impractical help. He is as affronted at the offer of sandwich the same way he is at hand to help him off the ground. 

Alex is a self-sacrificing, know-it-all jerkface. A jerkface that he had to drag from an underground bunker where he was researching a government conspiracy. A mass government conspiracy fostered by both their fathers. That’s a thing, right? There’s a support group for that, right? 

And now that very same jerkface is rubbing noses with an alien. Asshole punk airman in a hospital bed. Nose kisses, so many of them. With a genius alien. In a hospital. So many strangers around. With an alien who can literally move shit with his mind. Who has a massive, understandable phobia of hospitals and lab coats and white walls. Still, all sorts of calm kisses and caresses. So normal, so casual. Because this particular trio just has all the time in the world now, apparently. 

Kyle stop pretending to try to understand long ago. His life has just gotten so fucking _ weird _. 

He clears his throat to remind Guerin that he is still here. He points at his watch as Alex startles at the intrusion. Guerin holds Alex’s terrified face steady, crooning. “Hey, hey. We’re safe. It’s just Valenti.” 

Guerin says his name all tired-like, drawing out vowels and cutting out consonants. Va-len-nee.

Not having to frogmarch Guerin away from Alex and out of the room is a welcome shock. Guerin puts his boots and belt on and then swoops back in for another peck on Alex’s lips. He grabs his jacket from where he chucked it and throws it over his shoulder. He holds Alex’s hands in his own. He kisses each knuckle and says, “I’ll be right back. Doc needs my help with somethin’.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?” Alex croaks, concerned and unsure. 

“Yeah, ‘Lex, everyone’s fine. I’ll be right back, I will.” 

* * *

Taking the elevator down the lobby was a mistake. Kyle is quite certain that he has never felt this uncomfortable being alone with another person and now he has trapped himself in suspended box with said person. 

It is insanely awkward.

Kyle has never been adept at swallowing his pride and if he were honest with himself, and right now he has to be, his jealousy. The childish, knee jerk response to the prospect of Guerin’s return to Alex’s life was real. Kyle would be usurped. The king's piece he never actually held would stolen from him without a second thought. He could accept that. He could. He can do this for Alex. He says so in earnest to Guerin, unable to take the silence any longer. “I am sorry. I should have called you first before we made some decisions. Despite appearances, I respect whatever it is you two have. Actually, I really respect the work you are doing on yourself. You pulled yourself out of the woods. It was touch and go for a minute. You’re still sober? Mad respect. I just—I seriously didn’t know you were back together, or whatever you wanna call it. I’m not surprised he didn’t tell me. I can be kind of a dick about it sometimes. Got some work to do on myself, you know? It’s a process, as they say.”

Guerin’s hand on his shoulder jars him out of his high speed monologue. “Valenti, man, you’re… well, you’re babbling. Also, we’re not together. ”

Kyle forces the other man to meet his eyes. “You’re kidding me.”

Guerin looks down, swallowing a few times before raising his head again and cringing. “This is the first time I’ve seen him in about two weeks.”

He remembers now, Alex mentioning the shift schedule and how it was back to normal. When Kyle had tried to get out of him what happened purely out of mild curiosity, Alex brushed him off. He said it was nothing. He thought Alex’s comment about being a dick in the cave was maybe a euphemism. He was also only half-listening. 

Looking at Guerin now, he is momentarily distracted by seeing the other man this close and under such harsh, unforgiving light. He takes in the beading of sweat on his brow, the still present twitch in his healed hand, his unkempt beard, hunched posture, the bloodshot eyes. Kyle feels himself softening to him. Kyle is only human, after all. He is the only human in this elevator and isn’t that still a trip? But, he reminds himself that he has to make sure his own house is clean. He thinks of Rosa and what Guerin and his family had done to his, of what Kyle’s family had done to Guerin’s. He thinks of how out of it Alex was when he found him in cabin, slurring and seized up in pain. How Alex had been AWOL for almost five days, save for curt text responses, and no one thought to check on him. Not one of their supposed friends. Not even Kyle himself. 

He had worked for almost a week straight, went home, and slept in his own bed for 12 hours. It wasn’t until he received a stilted, but concerned Facebook message from a woman that Alex served with that he showed up at the cabin unannounced and uninvited. 

‘Dear, Doctor. Sorry to bother you and I hope I am not overstepping. Alex mentioned you by name a few months ago. I know Cap can get in his head sometimes,’ she wrote. ‘But it isn’t like him to not call me back. It’s been over two weeks. I’m worried. Can you check on him? It’s probably nothing.’ 

And now Guerin has the gold-set cojones to say that they still aren’t together. 

“You have got to be shittin’ me,” Kyle shouts and points back to the general direction of Alex’s room. “What the in pluperfect fuck was all that then?”

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know. I didn’t mean to come in like—He just looks so—” Guerin tugs at his hair for a moment. “Ugh, he just messes me all up. Man, Katherine is gonna kill me.”

Kyle crows, pressing their floor button repeatedly and with such force that his finger will bruise. “You do move fast, I’ll give you that.”

Guerin growls, pulse in his neck pounding, his bare biceps contracting. The elevator doors open with a clear _ ding _ and a welcoming automated voice declares ‘ground floor.’ He knocks their elbows when he shoves passed Kyle, calling over his shoulder, “Katherine is my shrink.” 

Shame overtakes Kyle in a wave, but he shakes it off like a wet dog, before it can consume him. Guerin walks ahead of him. The other man is cocksure, as if he could lead the way to a room he doesn’t know the location of with ease. He falls instep beside Guerin. “Well, you know, you should probably lead with that!” He grabs the other man by the collar of his shirt before he takes off down the wrong hall, pulling him to the left. “You need a fluoroscopy? ‘Cause that’s where you’re headed. Coffee place is this way.” 

They make their way down the stale smelling corridor in agitated silence. Kyle continuously checks for the file in his jacket pocket, a light touch of his fingertips to the pages. The book in his hand is held tightly to his side. Guerin’s face keeps contorting, as if he is about to cry, scream, or kick something with each passing step. When they reach the small side coffee shop outside the bustling cafeteria, Guerin plants himself at a corner table where Kyle can barely make out his anxiously tapping foot from the counter. Kyle hurriedly buys two large black coffees and shoving a fiver in the tip jar as a thank you. Guerin finishes a text hastily and shoves the phone back into his pocket. He takes the caffeine without acknowledgment. He picks at the sticker that reads “DR VAL COMP” on the side of the paper cup for a few beats before giving a pointed look to Kyle’s pants and forcing a grin. “You’re not on the clock, huh, doc?”

  
Kyle chooses to ignore the passive aggressive walk-around and just face things head on. That’s his preference. He and Guerin have that in common. “Nope. I could technically be on his team, but this is decidedly not my thing. Plus, I’m POA, so it gets a little messy. I couldn’t be objective anyway. Like, I would never operate on my mom unless it was absolutely necessary, you know?” 

Kyle believes that part of being a good doctor, maybe even a great one, is knowing one’s limitations. Emergency situation? Kyle’s your man. Alex gets stabbed, he can handle that in a minute. Leukemia diagnosis? He would get him the best people he could. Read up and get him all the right trials. This shit? This dark, mental, emotional shit? Kyle knows he doesn’t measure up. Not even close. 

“You’re his power of attorney,” a stone-faced Guerin states. “You.”

“And his med proxy. Who else could it be? We have no idea where his mom is at any given moment. You’d prefer Flint has the power to make medical decisions for him over me?” Guerin opens his mouth to reply, Kyle chuckles. “No, no, please. I’m such a demon for mistakes I made as a dumb teenager. So, how about Wade, instead?” Guerin actually draws back at that. “You want his most sociopathic brother deciding what’s good for Alex? That’s your idea of a good plan?” Kyle’s mouth forms into a hard line and grates out, “I am power of attorney, I’m med proxy. I am doing my due diligence. I am doing my job. Swallow it.” The mechanic had the decency to look a little ashamed. Kyle takes a moment to calm himself down before he says, “Tell me what he told you when I left y’all alone.”

“What are you on about?” Michael says, playing at incredulity. “He nagged me about work and if I am making enough money, asked after Mr. Ortecho and Mimi, hummed an Elton John song, and passed out. The usual.” Guerin isn’t stupid. He has to know what is coming and the doctor imagines based off his body language that he isn’t going to be too thrilled. Kyle’s fears are confirmed as he watches Guerin contract his fists four, five, six times before growling out, “I love him.”

He says it like a threat. Like it was his greatest power source. As if Kyle should be trembling before it. 

“Yeah, well, so do I. What else you got for me?” 

Guerin deflates and tap-tap-taps the middle knuckle of his ring finger against the table. It is maddening, it transports him back to being fifteen. Guerin constantly gives Kyle conversational whiplash. Maybe the bully in him will never fully die, because Kyle, at thirty, still finds it so difficult to ignore blood in the water when his guard is down. And Guerin just bleeds everywhere, always. It is part and parcel as to why he limits their interaction as best he can. Which is kind of a bummer, because Guerin may be a pain in the ass, but he is a damn funny pain in the ass. Kyle waits for Guerin’s answer now as he takes in his sunken eyes, his great vacillation from rage to victim.

Guerin opens and closes his mouth a handful of times. Kyle remains patient as the alien finally says, “You claim to love him now. And maybe you do, but not like I do. I love him. I want him. He wants me.” Guerin is letting out soft, little grunts in between each sentence. His eyes are wild. He continues to tap-tap-tap. A casual observer would say he is trying to intimidate Kyle, or worse, like he was about to have some kind of fit. But Kyle has spent the most time with Alex and Michael alone. Which is to say anytime at all, and he knows from Guerin’s posturing. He flounders in the face of Alex and perceived threat against them, immediately on guard and irrational. “We can love each other properly now. I can. I’ve been doing this… this handbook thing and I’m not drinkin’ anymore. I can do this now. He loves me,” he says confidently. “I love him,” he repeats just as assuredly, boring into Kyle’s eyes with his own. 

“I know it. I know you do." It’s beggars belief that anyone within a five mile radius of them wouldn’t know. “You ever told him that?” he asks, genuinely curious. 

The tapping stops. 

“Excuse me?”

“Have you, Michael Guerin, emperor of the Intergalactic High Horse, ever told that man that you are in love with him?”

“He knows.”

“Does he? He thinks he seems to think he is fundamentally unlovable. He thinks he causes nothing but death and destruction. He thinks he is evil. He thinks he is his father. Thanks for that particular gift, by the way. So, he is working himself to the bone to make up for his father’s mistakes. The only thing Jesse Manes never managed to take from Alex was his magnanimity and this,” Kyle declares, pointing at his head. Kyle takes a drag from his coffee, which is bitter and foul and burnt. He drums his hands on the table top. When he stops, he clicks his tongue and says, “I’m gonna let you in on a little something that you and the rest of the Pod Squad need to absorb and right quick: not every little thing is about you. You all think you are the only ones who hurt? Who’ve been left? Who’ve been shit on by people who are supposed to love you? We had a whole life before we even met you people. You three think you get a monopoly on trauma, on conflict. Like it’s a competition. It ain’t. I got news for you, if it were, Manes gives even you a run for your money. What is worse is that he thinks he is weak. He thinks you all think that of him. He thinks you pity him.” 

Guerin’s resolve crumbles for a few moments he lets out a handful of choking sobs. This situation is a prime example of why Kyle turned to professionals. He pulls half a dozen napkins out of the holder on the table. Guerin slams his head down on the table. As Guerin claws at his own scalp, Kyle babbles, shoving the napkins at him, “Oh, God. I’m sorry. Take a deep breath, man. I’m so sorry. I mean, I’m not sorry because you all need to hear it. But at the same time, I am so sorry, you know? You all are narcissists by necessity. I understand that. I do. You gotta breathe.” 

Guerin collects himself quickly. Sniffling and rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hands. “You can’t have him.”

Kyle makes a sound of disgust. “Jesus, what is it with you three? I’m not having him. He is a person. So, you can’t ‘have’ him, either.” Kyle tries his best to hold the line by using Ramirez's own words. He had to be, as best he can, calm and clear in the face Guerin’s unbridled passion. “He needs mandatory, monitored rest for three to five days to get back down to a baseline and come up with an action plan.” 

The man is a scientist, an appeal to logic must hold some water with him, or, at least, Kyle hopes. Those same hopes die in front of him almost immediately, when Guerin bites back with, “We can do that. Me and you. I know him best and you’re a fuckin’ doctor. We have Isobel and Liz, too.” 

Kyle nearly guffaws at the idea that either one of them could order Alex to do anything, ever. But, Kyle is trying to be good, so he doesn’t take the cheap shot. At that same token, Kyle doesn’t have the heart nor the interest in pointing out that they do not in fact ‘have’ Liz. The woman is so overwhelmed that she couldn’t be fucked about Alex and his problems right now. It’s cold to say that Liz has viewed Alex as a means to an end ever since they put Max in the pod and Rosa returned. She can’t be a person right now. She doesn’t have the luxury. It is cold and it is true. Instead, Kyle lets Guerin continue on ranting for a spell. He comes in and out of listening, as he fiddles with the spine of the book he had placed on the table between Guerin and himself. 

He interrupts Guerin and tells he that he agrees with him, long-term in-patient is unnecessary and would be disastrous for Alex. “That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about preventative treatment here. Do you want him to have an actual nervous breakdown? Because that is where we are headed if we do not nip this in the bud right now. Like you did. We both know the last thing we need is Manes in on a 51-50.”

“A what?” Guerin shouts. Kyle waves him off and tells him to keep his voice down. Guerin goes back to growling, “What about what he wants? What if he wants to come home with me? What he wants matters.” 

Kyle glances towards the baristas to make sure they aren’t eavesdropping. He drops his voice lower for good measure, “You’re not hearing me. He is physically incapable of getting any significant amount of sleep on his own. He’s starting to make mistakes he would never have made before. Mistakes that could affect you all. He is getting increasingly paranoid. I hoped once the stuff with his dad was, you know—I guess thought he would slow down. Chill out a bit? But, it seems to have made it demonstrability worse. And, you know, losing his war buddies the other week didn’t help, either. Obviously.”

Michael looks at Kyle as if he slapped across the face, hard. He moans and buries his head in his hands. “If you say Fooks and Montgomery… I swear, I’m fittin’ to lose my fuckin’ mind, right here.” Kyle says nothing. “LaTrecia is fuckin' dead? Colm is dead? How? Fuckin—fuckin’ when? How?”

“Fooks—”

“Trecia”

“Trecia was a roadside about a month ago. Montgomery—Sorry, Colm. He, uh, got an infection that they just couldn’t get back under control. By the time they got him to Rome, he was septic and had been for awhile. I’m sorry. Did you know them, or?”

“Naw,” Michael says with his head tilted towards the ceiling and his eyes closed. “I just felt like I did ‘cause Alex mentioned them more than twice.”

“He was pretty cold about it with me. I was there when he got the email from his Colm’s wife.”

“Why didn’t he tell me? Why can’t we just catch a fucking break. The fates punishing me, okay. That I get. But him? I just, I just wish that—”

“Guerin, even if all that shit hadn’t happened to him. He had an apple pie life, or whatever. He would still struggle sometimes, because he has a genetic chemical imbalance. He needs a break. He needs to sleep, he needs—”

“He sleeps just fine when he is with me.” 

Kyle eyes Guerin’s hands, they way he again splays them on the table before curling them into fists and then lays them flat again. He waits a few moments to see if Guerin will look up again, but no dice. The man resumes tapping. Kyle inhales through his nose and exhales out his mouth. “And that’s great, really. But what about when you aren’t around? Don’t you want to him to develop the skills to do it on his own? He has to learn how to survive on his own, in the civilian world. He can do it. He can do anything. He wants that for you, too. That’s why he’s been giving you space—”

“I know that and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ever? Not even on a vacation.”

“Ever.”

“Really? Not even with a ticket into outer space?”

“If I have him for real? No. Not without him.”

“You can’t possibly know that for certain. We have to be realistic here. Why are you smirking?”

Why are those three always_ fucking smirking_? 

Guerin shrugs. “I just realized that I have something you don’t. Something that Kyle Valenti can't charm his way into or buy. Never thought I’d live to experience this.”

“Oh, yeah, and what’s that? Please, enlighten me.”

He’s never seen Guerin look so calm and assured. “Love. Real love. You’ve never been in love. Alex and I, we’re in love. We have a quantum entanglement.” Kyle watches as Guerin swallows a few mouthfuls of coffee and thinks of how right he is. Kyle has never known love like that. Most beings don’t. It sounds so ridiculous. He wants to laugh at Guerin’s gall, at this dramatic notion that he so clearly believes it to be true. But, he has heard Alex say the same things, though admittedly less poetically. Kyle doesn’t understand it. Guerin pushes forward, “When we are together, he still has nightmares. We both do. But, we can talk each other down.”

“That’s wonderful, I mean it. Good for you. But, that is not a solution. He has to fix himself. He is strong. He can do it. But, he has to want to do it. Guerin, he needs a full psych eval. He needs a team of—”

“He sleeps fine with me. He sleeps through the whole night, even.” 

Kyle catches himself bellowing just be heard over Guerin’s grumbling, “It’s not just sleeping!” He takes a few breaths, rubs at his eyebrows until he calms down. “It’s not that simple. Come on, Guerin. Come on and admit that you know it’s not just that. I know you know.” He stares at Guerin, waiting for affirmation that never comes. He shakes his head out of frustration. “Goddamnit, dude. Goddamnit. He needs a team of unbiased professionals. Christ, losing a leg is bad enough. Add on top of that multiple combat tours, constant sensory overload, survivor’s guilt. How do think a gay kid was treated at boot camp in 2008, Manes or not?” Kyle continues and tries not to think of Alex at eighteen, of how undeniably _ pretty _he had been. “And then the abandonment, the isolation, the beatings, the broken bones, and degradation, and the screaming, and the—” 

Guerin tells him to stop speaking. Kyle watches the napkin holder and basket of creamer and sugar packets vibrate. He pushes through his fear of an episode and presses on. Guerin is looking anywhere but at Kyle, but he is hoping that other man is at least hearing him. It disgusts Kyle, the knowledge that if Jesse had just been a narcissistic, homophobic drunk that just beat Alex, it would be easier. The emotional abuse, the mental shit, making the boy feel wrong in his own body, unsure of his own sanity, of what is true, of what is his own doing is a much harder cycle to break. It is unforgivable. To Kyle, that act of torture alone is enough to consider Jesse Manes a monster. And then everything he had done to Guerin and his family and Jesse’s just plain violent nihilistic, twisted sense of morality. There is no doubt that Alex’s father was black-hearted, foul, an unrepentant villain. Guerin was right. Jesse Manes deserved so much more suffering. He doesn’t have time to unpack what that means for his memory of his own father. It’ll keep him awake at night for awhile, of this he is sure and perhaps deserves. 

Kyle takes the book off the table, fiddles with it in his lap. “Looking back, he was just so sweet when we were kids, you know? Mouthy little shit, even then, but with the sweetest disposition. One time, Alex wasn’t getting out of the truck fast enough. We’re going to learn how to fish with our hands, I think. I can’t remember. But what I do remember, clear as day, is Jesse pulled Alex out of the truck so hard that he yanked his arm right out of its socket.” 

Guerin bows his head until his forehead meets the table, Kyle hears him gasp out little, stilted breaths.

“Dad had to reset it. Right there in the parking lot. Flint was there. And I remember, after we snapped back into place—Dad was showing me how to do it—Alex let out this groaning scream. Just for a second. ‘And Bob’s your uncle,’ Dad said.” Kyle swallows, remembering the sick, clear pop of the bone sliding back into place. He still winces when he encounters the procedure at work. Some things just cannot be unheard. “And Flint, he l-laughed. He and Jesse just laughed.” The fucked up part is Kyle doesn’t even think they believed they were being cruel. It was a fraternal laugh, communal. As if they were amused, pleased even, that Alex had just joined some sort of not-so-secret club. They were nearly ten then and Alex didn’t even flinch. “On top of all of that, he was—” 

Always so sad. Kind, but distrustful and sad. Kyle remembers it with the shocking clarity that only years can bring. Alex’s melancholy nature, long before eyeliner, long before teenage angst was en vogue. Finding Alex at the piano with fresh tear tracks on his cheeks, he told Kyle how the Brahms sonata was so beautiful. Alex sobbing because he loved his mother so much that his heart felt “all heavy." One year later, Alex nearly destroying the communal treehouse out back when she left. In the summer between third and fourth grade, the pair of them found a dead hare in the backyard on a cloudy afternoon. Alex wept on and off for three days. He would fall asleep crying. Kyle’s father used to say that Alex was soft. When Kyle’s mother took up to defend him, Jim would just smile and compare Alex to butter sat out too long.

“He has been white-knuckling it through life since we were little. I’m astounded he is still here. I woulda punched my own ticket six months ago. Hell, sixteen years ago.” 

Guerin is clenching his jaw so hard that Kyle can see the muscles contracting. It makes Kyle think of an animal chewing gristle. When he finally speaks, it is a whisper of a snarl, “Take that back. Take it back, right now.” 

“I will not,” Kyle says, confident and easy. “Alex doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. Hasn’t for awhile. It is the truth. He’s got fight in him ‘cause he is a stubborn son of a bitch, like you. But, it’s not the same. I know, fuck—You’ve had a bad year. You’ve had a tough life. You both have. I dropped the ball big time with him, do you understand? I know it. It kills me. I am trying to make up for it now. I wish I could say because it is the right thing to do. But, it’s not. It is just because I fucking love that kid and I’m selfish and I want him around. Listen, I will never, ever be able to clean my ledger out with you. But I am trying here. For the record, you not exactly out of the red with me, either.” Guerin raises his eyebrows in a challenge and Kyle is sure that he will black out from the sudden surge of rage building in his chest. “My sister. My sister, you fuckhead.”

He slams his fist down with such force that the cups rattle. A sour-looking woman a few tables over startles. Guerin is talking and Kyle can barely focus. 

“I can never express to you how it kills me. How what we did makes me—”

“And now,” he barks, waving his hands in Guerin’s direction with disgust. “You have the unmitigated gall to stroll into _ my _ hospital against _ my _ expressed wishes. And, as a direct result of your stubbornness, _ my _ plan to help _ my _little brother is about to be flushed down the toilet!”

Guerin’s eyebrows are in his hairline now and Kyle pushes back from the small table with bulging eyes, beginning to sweat. He is beet red. Kyle stutters out an explanation that never really goes anywhere and eventually he sits back and waits for Guerin’s mocking. Guerin softens and gives him a look, as if to tell Kyle that it is okay. It sends a warm shiver up the doctor’s spine. Guerin stretches his legs. “It kills me to say it, but you’re right. He’s working too hard. He—your little brother—is such a dick. We need to loosen up on the watches. We don’t need someone there 24/7 with the check system he has in place.” 

That had been a long road. Alex is a perfectionist and likes to get things done fast. The faster, the better. Every second counts whether he is cracking alien code or building a shelf or tuning an instrument. Drumming up a fake social security record for Rosa was a twenty four hour straight through affair. Then a two day run a handful of days later to clear Michael, Isobel, Max, and Noah off of every trace of government and dark web files he could find. Then a near three day stretch for the makeshift ‘security system.’ Alex claims it was not his best work, and should be upgraded when they had the time, but his latest side project had been trying to score info on alien genotypes with Liz. And the bomb. And the Caulfield records. And information on Michael’s mother.

Self-sacrificing asshole.

“Yeah, no shit,” Kyle snaps. “Who do you think has been running around, in everyone’s ear? About potential helicopter surveillance and hot mics. He is losing his fucking grip, man.” Kyle counts off on his fingers, “He is increasingly paranoid, he is very sad, he keeps crying. God, the crying lately. Have you noticed? The restrictive eating thing. A couple weeks ago, he was only eating beans, right out of the can. So fucking gross. He’s so weird. He is engaging in risk-taking behavior like this bullshit and he is actively hurting himself, at this point. Clock is running out for him to have the agency to make the decision for himself. He has a mental illness. So, you need to make a move. Today.” 

“Adapt or let go,” Michael says and Kyle nods. Michael rubs at the back of his neck, “I’m not letting go. I can’t lose another person. I can’t. I’m too tired.” 

It’s the echo of exhaustion that causes a lump to form in Kyle’s own throat. How is it he can despise this person and yet he still feels such pain on his behalf? Perhaps it is because Guerin wears it like armor, for everyone to see. Forces you to confront the result of the worst of people, to look at what we made. Alex had said the same thing when he asked him whether or not he would be willing to talk to someone about his mental state: that he was just too tired to fight him off. Guerin has, in no way shape or form, proven to Kyle that he is worthy of Alex and yet, Kyle is earnest when he says, “I’m not asking you to let go forever. I would never dream of asking that of you. Shit, Guerin. I know this isn’t easy for you. This is why I didn’t want you involved. I was trying to handle it on my own.” 

Guerin is fragile, right now. They all are. 

Guerin closes his eyes. “You asking me for my blessing to send him to be prodded by a bunch of strangers in lab coats. And that’s a big ask. He’s—he’s peerless. He’s a pain in the ass and he’s glorious. There’s nothing wrong with him.” 

But, there is something wrong with Alex. That is just a fact. Kyle knows that pointing this out would only serve to spin Guerin off ranting again and he is growing more weary with each passing syllable out of the alien’s mouth. So, he capitulates, “I know you feel that way. It’s reciprocal. It’s a little nutty, you two. It’s a little much. It’s also beautiful, man. But, you know, he admitted to the psychiatrist almost all non-alien related stuff? A lot of things I didn’t know about.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, like the Scott stuff? 2010, right?”

Michael’s mouth moves in a mock bite. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Valenti.”

Kyle feels a frustrating rush of respect for Guerin then. He knows by looking at the man’s bloodshot eyes that if he pushes Guerin on this, he will not like the reaction. He has him back on the ropes again. Determination is coming off the alien in waves and Kyle is receiving the message loud and clear: you best shut your mouth talkin’ so flagrantly about certain things or I’m gonna put the hurt on you. Kyle pinches the bridge of his own nose so firmly it leaves red marks in his wake.

“Listen, something _ is _ wrong with him. And I’m sorry, but you cannot fix it by bringing him Christmas style vegan enchiladas and holding him while he watches _ Donnie Darko _ for fortieth time. Just like he can’t fix your shit by doing your laundry and making you a mixtape. No matter how tightly you hold him or how many retail folds he does. Right? It helps manage it. It’s so important to both of you. Please, believe me that I respect it. Hell, I’m envious. But you need to understand that you alone cannot fix this. Love is not enough. I think you of all people should know that.”

Guerin looks frightened and helpless. Kyle feels immense pain and anger in Guerin’s name. He can see it now, so clearly, why they are inevitable. They had to learn how to love on their own, with no example. Emotional regulation? Coping mechanisms? Hell, just basic healthy habits. How could they know? How could he hold that against this man when there was no way he could know and he is trying to learn now? Alex has jumped from one war to another for almost twenty years. It’s the same for Guerin. Guerin has been abandoned in every conceivable way and self-medicates. It’s the same for Alex. And they fucking love each so much and are so broken and yet they still try every day. It’s admirable and they are both are right, he cannot wrap his head around this. This raw emotion, the need for another person. To love without example. Just to love and be loved is them taking a stand. 

He wouldn’t wish this anguish on his worst enemy. 

If Guerin continues to feel out of control or threatened, he will lash out. He will run outta here with Alex so quickly that Kyle’s head will spin. Alex has all his faculties. He could not do anything to stop them. Kyle adopts his doctor voice, the one he uses with children. He talks him through the brochure, assures him that it is only thirty miles away. That he and Dr. Ramirez, who really cares, has made sure that the diagnostic code is clear that Alex can leave whenever he wants. He walks Guerin through the common practice of developing a community support service plan and how it says that some aspects of CBT can be done online and isn’t that kinda cool? The mop of curly hair on the table starts sniffling and mumbling. Kyle touches the other man’s elbow, as lightly as possible. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

Guerin lifts his head this time, pulling his arm away and scowling. “What if they start hurting him? What if some other patient starts hurting him? What if they don’t give him back?” to me. Kyle isn’t sure if Guerin actually says the words, but he hears his intent perfectly: what if they do not give him back _ to me _? “This whole thing could be a trap. Some weird, fucked up dormant plan from Manes." 

There are so many misunderstandings of the mental health system it astonishes him. The angel doctor in him is grappling with devil on his other shoulder who wants ridicule Guerin by telling him that he needs to shut his mouth because he barely takes care of himself. He is a mess currently and he could not take care of Alex to Kyle’s standards on his own. “If that happens then we go and we bust him out. Me and you, man. I’m a big shot doctor and POA. You can _ literally _ kill people with your brain. Also, Mom likes Alex and has many, many guns.”

Kyle watches as the pain Guerin feels, as the Earth-shattering hurt and ache transforms again to anger. If Kyle didn't know any better, he would say Guerin prefers that emotion to any others.

“That’s what people like you always say.” 

“You really think that of me? Still, after everything?” 

“You all can’t help it. It’s human nature,” Guerin answers. He spits out _ human _ as if it is leaves a horrid taste in his mouth.

“Alex is human. Alex is very much human.”

Guerin is smiling, his eyes are focused back on Kyle, but even more wild. “Yeah, he is. Your kind gets something like Alex. Something clever and formidable and so tenderhearted. You see someone like that, you see a being that is better than you will ever be. Your kind can’t stand it. Your kind smelled it on him the minute he was fuckin’ born. So you get him in your grip and you squeeze and squeeze until he breaks and then you try to reset him how you want him to be. Nasty, simple beasts are what you are.” 

He so desperately wants to insist to the man across from him that he is wrong. That he is dead wrong. But he can’t. 

Kyle is really having a rough, introspective twenty-four hours. 

He slides his jacket off, wrestling with the sleeves as he shoves the file held within it towards Guerin. Kyle can see the snarky remark, indignation dying in his throat. He flips the folder open and slides it further into Guerin’s line of vision. The Post-It Rameriz attached to the upper corner that reads: _ Patient does not like to be touched. Limit physical interaction where possible for now. Stubborn as a mule _. Guerin runs his fingers over ‘DNC any family’ which is underlined two times. He trails a healed finger along the four determined lines that Ramirez placed with purpose under ‘lives alone.’ 

Guerin places both hands over the text in front of him, shielding Alex, even in print. “Would he want me looking at this?” 

Alex trusts Guerin. Alex feels safe with Guerin. He told Kyle so many times in his own laconic way. Kyle nods, stretching his arms behind his head. “You wanna act like his de facto next of kin? Come in here and puff your chest out? ‘You can dip out, Valenti.’ Come on,” he says, tapping his pointer finger on the file. “Do the work then, husband.” 

Guerin actually looks up at that. 

Kyle smiles. Smug, like he has a buck in his sights. “Oh, yeah. Our boy in a soft, suede tux just walking down the aisle towards you. Not a Manes in sight.” He actually sees the corners of Guerin’s mouth quirked up at that, “You like that visual, huh? ”

Guerin fidgets with the edge of the paperwork. “So, what if I do?”

“You are not some great mystery to me. Here’s the task, helping him make important medical decisions, with all of the relevant information. Read this and come to your own conclusions. Ramirez just puts it all in medical terms. Black and white. I wouldn’t do this if I thought he would mind. The only part he will hate is that he will think he is burdening you. He is real _pissed_ at me, already. We’ll get through it. Or, we won’t. I don’t care as long as he gets better.”

“Oh, you’ll get through it, big brother.” Guerin is smirking at him when he says it. That’s a good sign, at least.

“So will you. Maybe you should call your counselor? Talk this through with her?” 

Kyle should have suggested that in the first place, he realizes, belatedly. 

Michael sighs, turning to the second page of the report, his gaze growing distant.

“Michael?”

“I will, okay? Just go check on Fiona. Please, it’s important. She hates being alone. She’s gonna be all worked up because he has been gone this long. She worries about him,” he swallows wetly. “She’s important,” Michael rubs at his eyes again. “She’s important to us.”

Kyle launches himself forward, clasps Guerin’s shoulders, and tells him that he is trusting him. That he is trusting him with his family. He holds his hands there, steady, until Guerin’s breath evens out. The man clears his throat, flips the file over and begins to read in earnest. 

Valenti takes his leave. He manages to keep his gait strong all the way to his car. When he slides into the driver’s seat, he notices that his hands are trembling against the steering wheel. He looks at the book on the passenger side seat. It feels like he has been carrying it with him for months. It was only a little over an hour ago, that Ramirez flirted with him, touched his arm. As he drives to the cabin, he tries and fails to not to picture how Guerin crouched over the cafe table, in the building that horrifies him so. 

* * *

Roswell Community Medical

General Psychiatric Assessment

**Patient Name**: Alexander Waya Manes, CPT **Patient DOB**: 10/16/1990

**Admission Date**: 03/07/2020 **Evaluating Provider**: N. Rebecca Ramirez, MD (#09893)

“If we’re doing this, I want him here.” Kyle had felt his heart swell with pride a little when Alex pointed his way. It was immediately deflated with Alex’s follow up of: “As a witness.”

Ramirez merely nodded. “That’s fine. This is just a consult requested by your attending because of the hallucinations. It is very standard. Just a clinical interview. I get the trepidation. But, Captain Manes, you are starting this interview free to go. Barring something unforeseen, you will end it free to go, alright?” She told him that she would be alternating between typing and writing and that if it began to distract him to just let her know. 

Ramirez was dressed in subtle greys. Her hair was pulled into a bun at the base of her dignified, tan neck. When he looked to Alex, the man was already looking at him, watching Kyle watching her. Alex gave him a knowing look before he put on a charming grin for her. “You can just call me ‘Alex,’ ma’am.” 

**Identifying Information**: Patient is a 29 year old, single, American Indian male, without children, recently received an honorable discharge from the United States Air Force (09/20/2019). Patient is a freelancer in IT. Patient has transtibial amputation of RLE. Patient presented to the ER with exhaustion, dehydration, hallucinations by proxy, and muscle pain. Patient was brought to the ER by friend and admitted involuntarily.

** Chief Complaint**: Patient interview for psychological evaluation requested by attending (see chart).

**History of Present Illness**: Patient describes insidious, long term major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) taking place over the course of ~15 years. NOTE: Patient records indicate no less than eleven admittances to the hospital for broken bones, ruptures, and infections as a juvenile. Of these, nine were flagged for child services with no follow up. 

Alex had smiled—smiled with teeth—when Dr. Ramirez asked about the fractures. His voice, even and calm, when he answered, “Yeah, my daddy sure hates fags, ma’am. Or he just hates me. Maybe both. I have twenty-nine years of anecdotal evidence that luck is not on my side. I mean, can you really know if an eight year old is a fag?”

Ramirez laughed when she followed up asking about luck and Alex had pulled the blanket back revealing his right leg. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“That makes me lucky?” he teased as he leaned over the side of the bed. He raised the new, sleek cane that Isobel helped him pick out onto the bed. “You think I keep this around for the aesthetics? Because you’d be right. Big _ House _fan. Hugh Laurie’s performance just blew me away, you know? His presence on screen is explosive.” 

The doctor tried and failed again to hide her grin behind her laptop screen. “You don’t have to make everything a joke.” 

Kyle is intimately aware of Alex’s sick sense of humor. He caught Becca’s eye and smiled as Alex deadpanned, “Oh, yes, I do. How else will people know that I’m a real blast?” 

Kyle listened and allowed him to lie about his family psychiatric and addiction histories. Alex had made a vague reference to his mother leaving him behind long ago. He asked Ramirez if being an absolute asshole counted as a medical diagnosis, before backtracking. Kyle tuned out his offerings of mild defenses of her and instead watched his friend alternate between wringing his hands in his lap and rubbing his palms on his thighs rhythmically. Alex looked around the room, memorizing the windows as potential makeshift exits. Alex had asked for Ramirez to leave that out of history so sincerely that she stopped writing mid-sentence. 

**History of Present Illness (cont’d)**: Patient’s self-esteem appears dire. Reported feelings of excess guilt, sleep disturbance, anhedonia, change in appetite and energy, increased activity, agitation. Does not report libido disturbances, no reported changes in concentration or memory. Patient does not report increased risk-taking behaviors, pressured speech, or euphoria. Patient does report excessive fears, worries, and panic attacks. Patient does not report hallucinations or delusions. Patient does report obsessions and compulsions. Patient’s activity level, attention and concentration were observed to be within normal limits. Patient does report symptoms of eating disorder (restrictive). There is no recent significant weight loss or gain. Patient does not report any symptoms of a characterological nature. 

Patient currently reports previous suicidal ideation, denies SIBx, denies homicidal ideation, denies violent behavior, denies inappropriate/illegal behaviors. NOTE: Patient is unaware of the severity of his current state due to its chronic and prolonged nature. Makes determination of accuracy of mode of onset, course, and precipitating factors for various symptoms (by proxy deeming level of co-morbidity) difficult at present. 

**Past Psychiatric History:** Previous psychiatric diagnoses**:** Z86.51 - Personal history of combat and operational stress reaction; F43.12 Post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic; Describes unstable course of illness. 

Ramirez asked if she could broach an uncomfortable topic. Alex responded with a raised eyebrow and remarked that none of this was "comfortable." She said that during his intake the CNA had documented significant evidence of long-term self-harm. Kyle thought of all the times he has teased Alex for long sleeves in hot weather. Because of the hospital gowns baggy sleeves, when Alex shifted in the bed, Kyle could see now the precise, deep, small, white, decade-long healed gashes that decorated both his underarms. You’d only find them if you knew what to look for. And, boy, once you did, there they were. Kyle briefly wondered how his friend ever cleared the military entrance psych eval. 

_Of course,_ Kyle thought. _His father, you complete and utter idiot. _

“And?” Alex replied flatly, unconsciously sat up straighter and tugged at his sleeves. 

“Can we talk about that a little more, maybe?”

“No, ma’am.” 

“That’s fine. Just one more question regarding this: can you tell me when the last time you engaged in self-harm was?”

“I can’t answer the question. It’s too vague, you haven’t defined your terms. ‘Self-harm’?” He tilted his head with a considering expression. “I eat too much ice cream on occasion.”

It was clear from the jump that Alex could smell how green she was. She nodded stiffly and with her face buried in her note book asked, “Can you tell me when last time you cut yourself was, Alex?”

Alex sighed, put upon and pushed his hair off his forehead. “I’m not a kid anymore, ma’am. That is a self-soothing practice of a child.”

Ramirez gently repeated herself.

“2013,” he said with the same intonation one would use call someone a twat. 

“Have you ever received psychiatric treatment?”

“I had the mandatory counseling or whatever after my leg. They wouldn’t clear me to leave without it.”

Ramirez asked how many sessions.

“Four. No, five.” 

“Do you feel that helped?”

Alex had shown teeth again, his canines glinted under the harsh fluorescent light. “Sure enough.” 

**Safety concerns:** _History of Violence to Self_: Patient does not deny previous self-harm. Scarring consistent with self-harm found on ABD, LUE, RUE, and LLE. Reported by attending medical professionals; _History of Violence to Others_: Patient is combat veteran. 

See attached military medical and psych evaluations from 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2019. 

“Alex, um, I would like to do something with you that, um, you may be familiar with because of your, um, military background.” Ramirez pulled a folder out and placed it in front of her. She fidgeted, smoothed down the pages a few times.

“It’s okay, ma’am. We have both been in this part of the zoo.”

She nodded to herself a handful of times, loudly cleared her throat. She snapped her pen cap onto the flat of the tray table, crossed her right ankle over her knee. “Yes. Yes, this is a sort of version of the Davidson Trauma Scale. Y-you’ve heard of that? For our purposes, we are going to treat as a civilian scale, so it is a little different from the military one that you are used to.”

She explains that this kind of scale deals primarily with events outside of combat that are akin to accidents, systematic bullying, domestic abuse: physical, mental, or emotional, sexual assault, dealing with death, or witnessing the abuse of a loved one, things of that nature. 

“Oh, this is an easy one then, ma’am: yes.”

“Sure. Would you be willing to share which of the events I listed specifically apply to you? It’s okay if you can’t at this time, but just a general idea would be very helpful. The questionnaire is informed by the context of certain events.”

“That you just listed? All of them.”

“All?” Ramirez blurted, equally loud and unprofessional. Alex chuckled good-naturedly, obviously charmed by her raw reaction. She seemed to balk at herself for a few moments before she recovered. “Excluding during your time in the military? Wait, I mean, excluding combat-based events?” 

Alex shrugged. He listed them with ease: he had been two car accidents, one of which he was at fault; Kyle and goons used to threaten to kick the shit out of him and sometimes actually did; his father and brothers threatened to kick the shit out of him and frequently did; he found his Auntie Paola dead in her kitchen after her heart attack when he was thirteen, Alex's laid his head next to her's on the table, the first of many vacant eyes; a lanky, tall man with the rank of First Lieutenant and the last name Fissel had held him down and ‘done his thing, imagined whatever it was he needed to imagine’ in a gym locker room at Scott AFB in 2010. When Alex was seventeen, he fell in love fast with a profound, sweet, gallant, beautiful, _ beautiful _boy. A boy who always felt warm like the sun and could kiss him placid like the moon, who had arms built like pillars and a sprawling labyrinth of a mind. A boy who understood without words, but could deploy them with rocky grace and told Alex he liked him just the way he was. A boy who made Alex want to rescue and be rescued. A boy that Alex loved just the way he was, who he wanted to take care of. They had come together; fusing, the boy had called it, his voice full of awe. His father caught them shortly after and his father hit that boy’s hand with a hammer four times and dragged Alex into the house by his neck. 

Ramirez placed her notebook to the side and typed for a few minutes, spared a glance and reassuring smile in Alex’s direction every few beats. She then asked him a series of questions, told him to respond on a scale of 0 to 10 of frequency and severity. “You said you have bad dreams about the event in the shed with the boy and your father?”

Kyle picked up from context clues immediately who ‘the boy’ was and felt physically sick. Alex looked as if he had betrayed all the innocence in the world because Kyle now knows. He answered with an eight. 

The questioning went on for another ten minutes, with varying levels of success. 

“Do you avoid doing things or going into situations that remind you of the assault in 2010?” 

Alex appeared sincerely baffled, his mouth twisted in judgement. “You mean, now? As a grown man?”

“Yes, on a scale of zero to ten, how severe is the avoidance in your day to day life?”

“Certain things cannot be avoided.”

“That’s not what I’m asking you. Would you like me to reword the question?”

“Five.”

Ramirez tried to guide Alex through it as quickly as she could and seemed to even cut it short in the face of Alex’s distress. Kyle gathered from the psychiatrist body language that Alex had scored off the charts. She clicked a number of boxes. “Well, that’s enough of that, huh? Have you spoken to anyone in your life about these events, or how they affect your day-to-day?”

“You mean, apart from you?” Ramirez hummed and nodded. Alex cleared his throat, adjusted on the bed, pressed the fold on the blanket flat. “A couple of doctors throughout my travels. I’m in that group, like I said. I don’t do much talking myself. But, I can start talking more if I need to. And my ma—Mi—” Alex’s face scrunched in pain for a moment. He raised his eyes to look at Kyle for the first time during the exchange, “Rocketman.”

Ramirez waited for an explanation and looked between the pair of them, expectantly. Kyle had broken first, rubbed the back of his neck as he coughed out, “His, uh, partner? Former. The boy. Mich—”

“Kyle!” Alex had been panic-stricken at that moment, more expressive than he had been in weeks. He eyed the closed door as if he feared his long dead father would bust through it at any moment. 

“I don’t need to know his name,” she assured him. Ramirez's neutral expression dropped only momentarily when she reached out to touch Alex’s wrist in reassurance and he pulled away as if the touch had scorched his skin. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Ramirez held up a hand. “Absolutely no apologies necessary. That was one hundred percent my fault. I’m not offended, okay?” Kyle watched as she scrolled back up to the top of the form on her laptop. “I’m sorry to hear that, when did the separation with ‘Rocketman’ happen?”

“When is it not happening?”

“So, pretty on and off, huh? Complicated?” Kyle followed her line of sight to find Alex looking down as he pressed on his nail beds, finger by finger, methodical. “Alex? Captain Manes? Are you still with me? Can you hear me?” 

“Five by five,” he murmured and maintained eye contact again. 

Alex had spoken then, clinically about how Michael thinks that he loves Alex, or used to, but doesn’t really want him. How he understands why Michael says he can’t be around him, there is too much pain there. Alex said he knows he can be a lot. For the first time during the whole exchange, Kyle watched Alex become increasingly upset. His lower lip quivered, his voice shook. Every time a tear fell he swiped at it. He had turned his whole body as far from both of them as he could get. He recovered quickly and apologized profusely. Said he was still a little raw for him and that he usually didn’t blubber, but he was very tired. She asked if he shared this information with other sexual partners or friends. Alex said that he didn’t have any other sexual partners, in the sense that Ramirez was asking. “Some fellow airmen and childhood friends know about certain things. My group friend knows a bit more than them and now, Kyle,” he replied, looking in Kyle’s direction. Like any good soldier, he ended his report with a stiff upper lip and an approximate time frame: “It was off again with Rocketman about a month ago, ma’am.”

Kyle, who had tried his best to not not engage throughout the entire affair, looked up from his phone. “You mean three months ago.” Alex had once again become fascinated with picking at his nails. “A _ month _ago?”

“Maybe six weeks? I’ve really lost track of time over these past few, alleged, days. He still comes over just to sleep sometimes. But, last month he, uh, drove me home. We were both—” He frowned at Kyle and then looked at Ramirez. “He lost his mother this year. His brother is very, very sick. He’s newly sober and he saw me out with a friend and just got, you know, a little jealous. It’s been difficult for him. His sister and brother’s girlfriend are a mess. He tries to take care of them. He is a little overwhelmed at work right now. He has two jobs. He takes on too much. He had a break-up recently. We were both upset about us and other—other things.”

Ramirez nodded sympathetically. Kyle had tried to restrain himself and failed. “Dude, come on. I thought the time after the bath was the last time!” 

Alex’s posture fell back to its militaristic state. He sat up, his spine straight, eye line elegant and level. Alex went terrifyingly, confidently still and he said, “I don’t expect you to understand this, but it’s how we communicate.” 

Kyle had rolled his eyes so hard he nearly gave himself a headache. “For the love of God, man! Why? You know, you’re right. I have tried. I really have. I still just cannot understand your fixation on jackass-prick-fuckface. Just tell him to go home when he shows up at your bedroom window, Molly Ringwald.”

“Molly Ringwald? That isn’t even—” Alex made a pinched expression. “He’s not a—He is a good person.”

“Cool it on the steely gaze.”

“He is the best kind of person,” Alex said to Ramirez. He implored her, enunciating every syllable. 

“Fine. Sure, he is a real prince,” Kyle hollered and threw his hands in the air. “I still can’t wrap my head around why you feel the need to hop on his dick every time you are in the same room? Huh? Why?” Alex looked at him and shook his head. As if Kyle was the one embarrassing himself and not him. Kyle laughed bitterly. “It’s always the same. He comes over and falls apart. You put him back together and he whispers to you about the stars or quantum physics or whatever. It’s good for awhile. Then you say something wrong, or don’t react quickly enough, and he blames all his shit on you. You apologize, every fucking time. Then some time passes and you’re back to making Abuse Survivor Heart-Eyes at each other from across the room, as if we _ all _cannot see you.”

“You about done?”

“Sure. I can be done.”

Alex nodded stiffly a few times and then spat with venom, “Fuck _ you_.” Alex’s face was red. His voice was still closed off, spine still straight, splayed shoulders, but he had begun to croak. He spoke to him mechanically, like he was reading a car manual. A car manual that makes you feel like crying, “I talked to you about him when I was feeling very hurt and you know that. You know I was hurting and how hard that was for me. It is so, so unfair to throw it back in my face. You ‘can’t understand it.’ Then allow me to explain it to you—”

“Oh, please, do go on.”

“You don’t want to ‘understand.’ Because it makes you uncomfortable that he is a man. Not some stereotype you can write off. You abhor the idea of us touching. It repulses you. I repulse you. I could see it on your face that day.”

“Oh, no. No, no,” Kyle insisted and wagged a finger at him. “It was because it was you and thinking about you in any sexual situation is very, very icky to me.”

“I was fully clothed. I was washing his hair.”

“Uh, not when I came back, you—”

“You’re getting angry because it’s true. If he were a woman, you wouldn’t be lecturing me about us still having sex. Sometimes,” he corrected abruptly. “Sometimes still having sex. It’s mostly sleeping.”

Kyle was at a loss for words and overrun with indignant anger. He couldn’t hold a firm thought well enough to respond with words. So, he made an emphatic jacking off gesture and returned to his chair. 

Kyle knew that part of what Alex said was right. He always was. And Kyle was disgusted by his own shortcomings, his prejudices. Kyle found them in Alex’s bathroom, Michael’s left leg sticking out the side of the tub. Alex had been murmuring apologies for scrubbing so hard, but he had to. Michael had been caked in mud. He remembers the sound of disgust he made when he came back to check on Alex in the morning, when he nearly stepped on the used condom that had just missed the trash can. He knows he pulled a face when he came upon the open bedroom door, at the glance of a bare ass and Alex’s legs wrapped around Guerin’s waist a split second before the alien shouted and slammed the door shut with his mind. 

“Because he’s a man’s man like our fucked up fathers tried to raise us to be. He _fucks me_ and I like it. And you found out for certain on that day. That’s why it’s a problem for you. You can’t hold the two ideas of me in your tiny, ignorant brain at the same time: brave soldier—that old oxymoron—and inadequate faggot that needs saved ‘cause he got beat by daddy, right? You have to silo parts of me. In some ways, you are still the same arrogant, candy-ass, homophobic mama’s boy that you have always been and always will be.”

Kyle knew he was being baited, but it hurt all the same. Alex has always known how to press insistently on a bruise, always able to make him cry Uncle with a few syllables. No one could make him feel like nothing quite like Alex could. He rasped, “Wow. Let me know how you really feel, Captain.” 

“You tell me! Be honest, you think me having sex with him is a sign of weakness. And maybe you’re right. But, it is what it is. I am what I am.”

“Oh, boy. I’ll take ‘Projection’ for 800, Mr. Trebek.”

“Really?” Alex questioned, smug and flippant. “Slept with Liz lately?” 

“You motherfuckin’—” 

Ramirez, who up until this point had been trying to be a paragon of professionalism, whipped her pen at Kyle’s head. It beamed off his right temple and fell to the floor. 

“Dr. Valenti if you cannot keep yourself in goddamn check, I am going to have to ask you to leave.” Kyle opened his mouth to defend himself, but simply Ramirez held her hand up to him and fully faced her patient, “Alex, you do not need to explain the nature or the reasoning behind the consensual physical relationship with your lover to anyone, ever. When it comes to the act itself, you and... Rocketman, make love to feel close to one another? Because it makes you both feel good?”

Alex nodded.

“I think I get it. It’s one of your ways of making him feel loved.”

“I hope so,” Alex answered, his voice sounded small compared to his controlled, assertive nature a moment before.

“Makes you feel loved?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Very much.” 

“Good,” Ramirez assured. “Because you both deserve to feel that. You deserve all of that you can get. Sharing love, giving it. That’s a strength. I assume you enjoy having sex with this man and he enjoys having sex with you?”

He nodded again. 

“And you use protection?”

Alex snorted and wiped away a stray tear. Kyle felt he was looking at the eleven year-old boy he used to fail to coax into climbing fences and into playing one more round of Mario Kart; that boy, unmovable in the face of peer pressure, stubborn and funny, was transported in time to that hospital room for a moment when Alex rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, ma’am.” 

“It sounds like the emotional part is a little messy. It sounds like both of you are having a hard time. Together and apart. Maybe you want to talk to someone about that. A professional, or a friend, even. But, the physical stuff, feeling good, the vulnerability, the desire. Alex, there is no indignity in that. It’s the very opposite. No matter what these assholes in this stupid world tell you. They can all just fuck off. Just fuck right off. Okay?”

“Alright.”

“Okay. Good, good.” She inhaled loudly and turned on Kyle like a viper. She was vicious and cunning in her assault and sniped, “And you, Dr. Valenti. You are gently reminded that this room is a safe space and that you are here as a courtesy to my patient.” She stabbed her pointer finger to her chest. “My patient. This is highly irregular and I am coming to regret it. I need my pen back.” 

Kyle handed the pen to her, proverbial tail tucked between his legs. 

“I want him here. I need a witness or I’m done with whatever this is,” Alex said, waving his hands vaguely. “I’m so fucking sorry, Kyle.”

Kyle tsked with his head in his hands. “No way, man. I’m sorry.”

“No, no. I was wrong. I was being cruel. I’m sorry. I am. I wish I could take it back.”

“An argument every once and awhile is good. And you weren’t entirely wrong and that’s on me. Not you. Becca’s right. You’re not doing anything wrong. That shit? There’s nothin’ wrong with you, man. Except for the fact that you are a vegetarian.”

“You’re weren’t entirely wrong, either.”

Kyle said that he knew, that he took no joy in being right. 

“It’s not Michael. It’s me.”

He wanted to tell Alex in that moment that some of his anger stemmed from envy. The real, pure green monster. But it wasn’t the time for it. “I’m sorry I threw him back in your face. That was fucked up of me. I’m an asshole. I don’t know everything that goes on between you two.”

Alex said he was worn out and waving the white flag. He held out his hand for a shake. When Kyle grasped it, Alex slid his palm against Kyle’s. Then, together, they slapped the backs of their hands, bumped fists, and waggled their fingers. Alex smirked and Kyle choked out a wet laugh as they repeated the motions three more times.

Ramirez looked exhausted when she said, “Okay. Let’s get back on track then, shall we? Speaking of fatigue and that maybe making you a little emotional, a... nurse mentioned that he may have heard you crying a few hours ago. Were you in any physical pain?”

There are no male nurses on this floor. Kyle checked the schedule to make sure of it, so that he could assure Alex. Kyle tried to bury himself in his phone. He slunk low in his seat when he felt his friend’s eyes on him, certain that he was glaring. The doctor nervously opened apps. He pretended to be very engaged with his banking statement. He refused to look up. Because Alex was right, he is kind of a candy-ass. 

“Wow,” Alex deadpanned to the side of Kyle’s face. “This ‘nurse’ sounds like a real narc.” 

Ramirez was his Earth angel. In that moment, Kyle was certain. She calmly explained to Alex that what he was experiencing were called crying jags. She told him that sometimes they can sometimes be indicative of much greater problem. Alex told her that he doesn’t know when they started, but it has been happening his whole life. Ramirez nodded reassuringly, as was her way. 

Alex was so calm to start. But, with every repetition of how he thought it wasn’t a big deal, he became more confused. His frown lines deepened as his mouth formed a scowl. “Quit looking at me like that. Both of you. It’s not a big deal. It’s just life.” 

**Trauma history:** Patient does report a history of trauma including abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, and witnessing disturbing events. Combat trauma history attached (2017). 

Past Medical History: **Surgical history** Transtibial amputation (11/20/2016); REDACTED; REDACTED; Tonsillectomy (06/13/2004); Myringotomy (08/09/1992)

Medications: Nortriptyline (10mg, q.d., 11/20/2016); Tylenol #3 [codeine/acetaminophen] (prn, 11/20/2016) 

Patient symptoms include: excess muscle tension, sleep disturbance, irritability, being easily fatigued, suicidal ideation, night terrors, low self-esteem. 

**Psychosocial History:** Occupational History: currently employed. Eleven years of military service. Education history: B.S. in Data Security (Webster University Scott AFB); MSCS (Boston University). Developmental History: no significant details reported. Legal History: no reported/known of legal issues, no reported/known conservator or guardian. Spiritual/Cultural Considerations: none reported.

**Mental Status Examination:** Patient appears cooperative, appears with distress. Psychomotor activity appears slow. Patient is COAx2, oriented to place and self. Presents with inconsistent eye contact; constricted affect. Speech: provoked, normal rate, appropriate volume/tone with no problems expressing self. TC: abnormal content elicited, admits previous suicidal ideation and denies homicidal ideation. Process appears linear, coherent, goal-directed. Cognition appears grossly intact with distracted attention span & concentration and average fund of knowledge. Judgment appears fair. Self insight appears poor.

“Are we about done here?” Alex asked. 

Ramirez was good at this, even with the way she stumbled her way through some of the intricacies at the beginning. She was masterful at making Alex, the most stubborn and distrustful person Kyle knows, feel disarmed. With such ease she pulled detail after detail out of him. Kyle knows things now that he shouldn’t, but it is too late for regrets and apologies. He tried to get up to leave a handful of times when he felt that things were getting heavy. Alex always kept his eyes forward and pointed for Kyle to sit his ass back down. 

“Just one more question: do you have any good memories from your time in the Air Force?”

This line of questioning surprised Alex. She shook him from his practiced responses. He swallowed a few times and answered, “Uh, yeah, of course. It wasn’t all Sturm und Drang. I made some friends. Some really good friends. Got two degrees. Saw the Persian Gulf. I was good at my job. I was really good at my job.”

“And whereabouts did you complete basic, again?” 

“Alabama, ma’am. Then I was at Scott for a little over a year, like I said.” 

Ramirez hummed. “A friend of mine was stationed at Scott. She hated it.” 

“When?”

“Late nineties.”

“I heard it was a pit back then. It wasn’t too bad when I was there. We even had a Burger King.” 

“Right. And this particular base is where your second attempt was?”

Alex straightened his head and gave her a hollow smile. He slithered and twisted towards her in his bed. “I hesitate to call it ‘an attempt.’” 

The other time was at fourteen. A noose and a half-rotted beam. Kyle knows that now. He has to adjust to that now, allocate space for it in his own head. 

“This was after the assault, yes? You said tried to cut your wrists that time.”

Direct and to the point, Ramirez was a quick learner and left him no wiggle room. Just like Alex taught her thirty minutes before. If this had been the outside world, Alex would have beamed with pride. But, this wasn’t a classroom or a skate park. Alex has never liked it when someone thinks they are a step ahead of him. He had been visibly annoyed by this line of questioning. As if it were below him, as if she asked him about slamming doors when he was a middle schooler. “A not great thing happened, but it was my own fault. In the military, you have to learn quickly what to do and not do. It’s a lesson certain kinds of people have to learn at some point during their first couple years, one way or another.”

“Certain people?”

Alex looked at her as if she were a bug. A very annoying, ignorant fly who liked to buzz around his head and ask dumb questions. He leaned back into the bed in mock relaxation. “Women. The way women were treated was— Jesus. I did what I could and I paid for it. Women and men who are like me have tough time. But, I come from a military family. My name and the fact that I do good work shielded me until it didn’t. I should’ve known better. And I didn’t have the tools to handle it like I do today. It was nothing. It was the act of a dumb, selfish kid.” He smirked, leaned forward again, and spoke slowly as if he found Ramirez to be absolutely no challenge for him, “I can say with sound mind and body, with the rank of Captain in the presence of a medical doctor and the Sheriff's son, that I would never do such a thing again. I have some people depending on me. I was weak then. I look back on it as an embarrassment. A flaw in my judgement that I’d very much like to forget.” 

  
“I don’t think you have a weak cell on your body. The fact that you managed to hide all of this during your service? Brilliant boy. As far as an embarrassment—" 

“It was a folly of youth, ma’am. Nothing more.”

“A folly that happened twice?” 

Alex shrugged, in that slow, languid way of his. He kept his face impassive, never broke eye contact. He raised both eyebrows and frowned. “It’s like I said. I was a real dumb kid.” 

**Assessment & Diagnoses: **

Dx: - F33.2 - Major depressive disorder, recurrent, severe w/o psych features

Dx: - F34.1 - Dysthymic disorder

Dx: - F43.12 - Post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic

Dx: - F41.9 Anxiety disorder, unspecified

Ramirez handed various pamphlets to them both and planned to let Alex stew. But Kyle started immediately and with cheer that he knew sounded false to Alex’s ears. He campaigned and Alex dodged until he couldn’t. Kyle knew he had made a direct hit when he asked Alex what he would tell Kyle to do if the roles were reversed. What would he tell Liz? Michael? Isobel? Hell, what would he tell a stranger off the street? 

“I had it,” he insisted. Despondent and confused, he gripped at the blankets. “I don’t know when I lost it. I had a handle on it. I had a handle on it, all by myself. Remember?”

“I know. You were doing so good. You’ll gonna be doing good again. Real soon.”

“Maybe I need to be on meds.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. The doctors will help you figure it out.”

“Well, these fingernails need to be trimmed,” Alex said with a full New Orleans yat as he held both his hands up. He laughed to himself for a moment and then scoffed at Kyle’s confused expression. “Straight men are the worst. You can hold down the fort for a few days? 

Kyle nodded enthusiastically. “Of course. Five days,” he said. “At most. Alex, I swear.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Whatever. I feel like I’m going soft. I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to recharge.”

“Right, you need some peace and quiet right now.”

“What I need is to be able to do my job,” Alex snapped. “I can’t right now. I just can’t get ahead. I keep having fits like a damn spoiled child. So, if you are telling me that I do this and then I can get back to a place where I can work, then fine. Alright? Fine.” 

Kyle said he would take it. 

Alex got a little weepy again when they discussed the logistics of Fiona, but Kyle assured him that Isobel would be more than happy to take her for a few days. They agreed on telling the others that he was visiting friends in California. Alex made him write down the date and time for the meeting with the archivist and promised to get it to Liz. 

When they wrapped up, Ramirez asked Alex if he wanted her to come with him to the center. Taken aback by the kindness, Alex reverted to his default quickly and declined. Kyle hid his smile behind his hands as he watched Becca pulled open Outlook and cleared her morning, “OFFSITE FOR MANES-INTAKE CONSULT” taking up the block in bright red. Before Ramirez took her leave, she shook Alex’s hand and he thanked her for her candor. 

“Kyle, I’m about to pass out from exhaustion here. Before I do, couplea things. I’m so fuckin’ pissed right now. Despite that, you’re my friend. You are a damn good friend and I love you.”

“Back atcha. Anything else?”

“Yes. I need you to tell Michael something for me. It’s very important.”

**Impression & Recommendations**: Patient is found to be increasingly unstable and does not have control of behavior. Patient likely poses a risk to self in future and minimal to no risk to others at this time. Patient denies abnormal perceptions. Patient does appear to be responding to internal stimuli, potential for disassociation. Needs further observation. Based off of assessment and narrative from patient history, Patient has suffered from repeated complex trauma and untreated and severe, albeit high functioning, mental illness, consistently. Both since early childhood. Patient has little to no self-worth. Patient seemingly has little to no quality of life. Can confirm re-occurrence of PTSD, PDD, and MDD, and occurrence of long term anxiety disorder. Patient does not deny former suicidal ideation and two attempts (2004 and 2010). Patient does not believe suicidal thoughts to be cause for worry or “abnormal.” Patient claims to have “always had” suicidal ideation and “functions just fine.” Combat vet and highly intelligent, knows what to say and not to say. Claims to be “fine” and in support group for PTSD. Patient claims no current suicidal ideation. Patient’s father is recently deceased. Patient recently separated from long term (?) partner. Patient paranoid and distressed re: former partner and safety. Patient worried about friends and safety, feels responsible. Recommend 3-5 day voluntary in-patient stay in facility once pain management is under control (>36 hours), as to establish and obtain euthymia and to set-up long-term, out-patient action plan with robust mental health team with specialization in combat and complex PTSD and childhood trauma. 

**Additional Notes**: Patient has been neglecting PT, as noted in the chart. Complete evaluation and discussion of short-term in-patient treatment with Patient was done in the presence of Patient’s NOK/POA (Kyle Manuel Valenti, MD #72477) as requested by Patient. 

Visit lasted ~95 minutes. >%50 of time spent coordination of care. 

* * *

Dogs hate Kyle. Or specifically, Alex’s dog hates him. 

The bitch assesses that he is decidedly not Alex, nowhere near Guerin, and he was not female. Fiona snarls and barks, inching towards him. He tries to reason with her, “Listen, I know we don’t see it for each other, but work with me here. I am just trying to make sure Mommy and Daddy do the right thing, okay?”

He scampers from the kitchen to the back door, a ziploc filled with dry food clutched in his hands. He dumps the food in her bowl, jumps back into the cabin, and shuts her out in the yard. He feels a stab of guilt, because it is early March and it still gets cold in the evenings. He’ll let her back in when he leaves and shouts through the window that they never have to do this again because “Daddy will be here tonight.” God-willing, it will be just Daddy. She ignores him in favor of rubbing her body on the grass. 

Kyle cleans up Alex’s cabin a bit. The man is a simultaneous neat freak and incredibly unorganized. A controlled chaos of clean, tidy piles of papers and books line most of the table space in every small room. He remembers Isobel mentioning that she was going to pay a “dumb as a rock, super-hot, barrel-chested top” to build Alex floor to ceiling bookshelves. He recalls it with ease because it was one of the handfuls of times in the past few weeks he’d heard Alex laugh. 

Alex writes coded notes to himself, so Kyle isn’t sure what he can pitch and can’t and he leaves them be. He opens the fridge to clean it. He only finds cases of soda, hot sauce, mustard, and a half-empty container of tofu. The white, soft brick is covered in salt and Tabasco. One edge has fork markings, as if Alex had been eating it raw out of the container. Kyle checks the cabinets and finds dog dog treats in bulk, three bags of popcorn, and a dozen cans of pinto beans. He sets an alert on his phone to remind him to buy a bunch of frozen pizzas and burritos so Alex has food to make when he gets home. 

He ushers Fiona back into her warm home just before he leaves. She nips at his left ankle in thanks. 

Kyle rushes to his apartment. He changes into his scrubs and packs his hospital bag. He is not technically due back until 7pm, so checks his email in the nearest gas station parking lot. He is nervous. A rare feeling for him. The uncommon nature of it only causes him to become even more unnerved. He sucks down a Fanta slurpee and eats two and a half sticks of beef jerky to soothe himself. Kyle ends up fucking around at the Conoco parking lot a little longer than he planned, lost scrolling through Isobel’s insta feed. He is stuck looking at a particular photo of Isobel and Alex is from almost three months ago during a hiking trip they grumbled their way through with their peer support group:

> 11,511 likes 
> 
> Instead of actually trying to hike (check the boots! @thenorthface) with our group (because, hello, it is winter and some people are differently abled, assholes), I made Alex trek the easiest path to the pretty trees and best lighting for photos. As our new friend, @trailguideshawna, was taking this, I regaled him with my grand plans for our future. Thus, his face. 
> 
> **Me**: I’m going to the whole house up like the Beetlejuice house for Halloween this year. The guests will be expecting the Deetzes, but we’re gonna PIVOT, babe. I want us to go as Sandoval and Ariana from Vanderpump Rules. They are actual, real life demons. I will get us red contacts and everything. Fiona can be Giggy. It will be perfect. 
> 
> **Bae**: I only understood one word of that and it was “Beetlejuice.”
> 
> **Me**: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. We need to lock down our Halloween plans, strike while the iron is hot. 
> 
> **Bae**: It’s December. 
> 
> **Me**: What does that have to do with anything? 
> 
> #beetlejuicebeetlejuice #sandoval #instagramlessalexander #teamalex5ever #babyboycouldMODEL #survivors #halloween #bluffsprings #beabullsofinstgram #iamwearingfunctionalboots #wildernesswoman #survivorsupportnetwork #sssrnm #weleftearly #cuzwegettinnoodles 
> 
> 29 December 2019 

He feels contrite as he gazes at Alex’s relaxed posture in the photograph. Kyle couldn’t seem to tear himself away from looking at how she is gripping him close and how he is letting her. Both of her arms are wrapped tightly around his waist, he is resting his cheek atop her head. Everything in her stance seems to be screaming, ‘You’re safe with me. I am safe with you. Safe safe safe safe.’ It is equal parts decidedly possessive and unconditionally doting. It is unnerving and heartening. It’s pure. It’s Isobel. It’s Isobel Evans and Kyle is pretty sure Alex trusts her completely. 

When he starts to drive back to the hospital, the sun is nearly down. Turning into the hospital staff lot, he is still nervous. Maybe, he really should have called her. Maybe, that would have made a difference. Made this easier. But it is too late now. He hopes against hope that the longer he gives Guerin, the more likely it is that he will see reason. 

Kyle audibly curses when he sees Guerin lurking just inside the hospital’s main entrance. For a few terrifying minutes, Kyle thinks he may actually have to hit him. This is a major bummer because Guerin could and would completely, utterly _whoop his ass_ in a fair fight. The man was ready to choke him out in the least sexy way possibly mere hours ago. Guerin would have done it. Screw the Jedi or whatever grip. The alien would have choked the life out of him with his bare hands, Kyle knows it. He really doesn’t want to get his ass handed to him at his workplace, but he will do what he must. Kyle comes through the automatic doors and throws his hands in the air, “God, you are painfully predictable, you know that?” 

He adjusts his duffel strap on his shoulder and holds the book Ramirez trusted him to pass on to ‘not-boyfriend’ out to him. 

Instead of answering him, Guerin exhales loudly and began marching towards him. It is quite a sight. Kyle stands in the doorway stunned, metaphorical dick in one hand, holding out the literal book in the other. Guerin’s face is swollen, tear tracked, but his expression is determined, hopeful, petulant, sad, frightened, obstinate, all at once. The shaken, but strong man (alien, being, soul) avoids Kyle’s eyes as he shoves sheets of papers and a half liter of shockingly cold Cherry Coke Zero into the doctor’s hands. He rips the book and brochures from him. 

“That’s for him.” Guerin points to the papers and grunts. 

“I figured.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t read it.”

“Alright,” Kyle easily fibs through his teeth.

“We can’t stay here.” 

“What?” 

“Alex and I. When all this shit all gets sorted, three weeks from now or three years from now. When it’s done, we have to go. We can’t stay in Roswell. I—I don’t think I can stay here.” 

“I know.”

“I’m gonna need your help.” 

“You have it. Anything you need.” 

“I haven’t even told you with what yet.” 

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll figure it out when the time comes. Go. I got this.”

Guerin pauses and then nods, eyes wide. The man is half-way to the exit before Kyle remembers, fishing his phone out of his pocket. He gives an aborted half shout, “Man, shit. Wait. He told me to tell you, he said—hold on he made it a note. Just let me pull it up. It was mostly gibberish. He said, ‘We both know Queenie is about to go full Dark Jean.’ J-E-A-N. Does that have any significance to you?” Michael face is impassive as he eyes the phone. Kyle sighs, “Alright, uh, he also said, ‘Just keep it in the nest like we have been. Be back soon. Start without me if you have to. It will work.’ Something about the mice? ‘You are the key, you are the light. I honor my commitments. I keep them with my heart songs. This isn’t me looking away, please believe me, even though I don’t deserve it. I’ll be back and I love you both.’”

“That crazy son of a bitch. He figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” 

“No idea,” Guerin lies, barely concealing a smile. “A letter for a letter. Correspondence. Surely handsome enough to tempt me,” he laughs. “We’re gonna be okay. Oh, my God. Fuck. We all just might be okay. You got this for him?” Michael begins to say that he is trusting Kyle, that he is trusting him with his soul. 

“I got it.”

With Guerin’s weak walls back in place, he chucks deuces up on his way out of the door, “Alright. Take it sleazy, Valenti.” 

He watches Guerin walk through the hospital exit, shoulders taut, arms shaky. He does not look back. 

He waits a few moments to assure himself that Guerin is gone before he slumps down against the wall. Holds his breath and begins turning over the printed pages of the evaluation to find the written words. He’ll burn this if he has, too. He scans Guerin’s choppy and neat scrawl, eyes purposefully skating over personal details. It is soppy and raw. Guerin goes on for pages, loving and methodical, as if he was constructing a symphony about the smell of Alex’s hair, how he wishes he could spend centuries exploring the expanse of Alex’s big, beautiful brain. Then on to broken vows, Curie's Principle, apologies, something about deliverance in sheds and guitars, their mothers, promises to watch the dog, trauma echoes, shipbuilding and elastic deformation, Greek myths, Max and Isobel, starlight and how pales in comparison to Alex’s sleeping face, their plan twelve years ago to runaway to Boston, wondering how it feels to fly a plane, parallels, children in cages, children in hospitals, how fear strikes him immobile at times, courage and understanding, musings about a Brand New song, leaving the desert, leaving the planet, not looking away, Christmas trees, Colm and LaTrecia and the dude at the bar, Guerin’s own therapy, slaying dragons, marriage, a baby, bra–ket notation, more apologies, how Guerin finds home when he is inside Alex, how the concinnity of their conjoining is a balm to his searing pain; the sweet relief to the ever present, thunderous entropy in his mind, never the cause. Kyle’s breath grows labored, flipping through page after page to get to the answer he needs. The confirmation so that he can finally breathe easy for the first time in months: 

_Half-bird, you need to do this for us, for me, for you. It’s scary. I’m scared, too. It’s not forever. I promise. I know we think we don’t deserve good things, but we do. Most of all you. You are so brave. We can do this. We’re both doing good. I’m handling my business. You’re doing so good. This is just a bump in the road. I wish I could say I hated that we can’t seem to ever ease into this. But, I don’t. I am so desperately in love with you that it makes me dizzy. I’ll take you anyway I can have you. I knew the moment you snatched your guitar back that you were it for me. That you were for me. That you were mine. Don’t you know that? Haven’t you always known? You must have, somewhere deep inside, where none of our demons can reach. Those places still exist within us. I know this. I know it because when I look at you, I see you getting dizzy, too. If you want, call me when you get settled. Or, we can wait until you are out. Whatever you want. Anything you want. Fast or slow. Here or there. I’ll come running to you this time. It’s only time. What is time in the face of you and me? I’m endlessly proud of you, my lovelovelove. My only love. My absolute. _

_Michael_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1, Yes, having gone through a psych eval myself, you can have someone there with you. Yes, having gone through a psych eval myself, if you’ve mandated someone to have access to your medical records, they have license to show whomever they want. Also, this is a fictional story, so. I also lived on an Air Force base for four years when I was a child and I know a lot of mechanics. The idea that Alex and Michael both do not have the foulest mouths in existence is laughable. I, too, was a punk military brat and we can out curse the smarmiest Scotsman. Conversely, every person is ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ unless they tell you otherwise. It’s beaten into you early. It thrums in the blood. You should hear me scheduling a dental appointment. I go full astronaut: “Wednesday at 9am sound doable for you?” “Affirmative.” “We’ll see you then.” “Thank you, sir.” “Stop calling me sir.” “Sorry, sir. Have a good, productive rest of the day, sir.”  
2\. On my cat's life, I started writing this in April. The "dick" comment is not meant to shade Vlamis. Though, if that is its effect, I'm am also cool with it tbh.  
3\. All songs and/or artists referenced can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/09G6rT1qnO0n96Smrm93vA?si=HiEeNEVTTHSfLsJO_U-ZUg)  
4\. Other titles indirectly referenced or quoted: Song of Solomon 1:15; 6:10, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett, Fleabag, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Odyssey by Homer, Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare, Watership Down by Richard Adams, and A Streetcar Named Desire.


End file.
